


Petey, we did it, we outran the Blob

by jadeopal



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Schizophrenic Wade Wilson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 20:23:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17732048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadeopal/pseuds/jadeopal
Summary: Deadpool just wants to find and kill the guy who turned his face into the biological version of a Jackson Pollock painting. Is that too much to ask for? Apparently it is, because the Avengers just won’t let him be and get his revenge in peace. Also, Spidey keeps showing up and calling him Wade like they’re best buds now or something, what’s up with that?





	Petey, we did it, we outran the Blob

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to all the mods on the Spideypool discord server for organizing this event! Also, shoutout to [onthestraightandnarrowpath](https://onthestraightandnarrowpath.tumblr.com/), who did [the artwork for this fic](https://onthestraightandnarrowpath.tumblr.com/post/182729835123/art-master-post-for-spideypoolbigbang-2018), as well as to TJC2009 and music-culture-mythology for helping beta my fic.
> 
> This fic was inspired by two things: first, a specific panel from the comics, and second, [this article](https://mosaicscience.com/story/anosognosia-assisted-outpatient-treatment-lauras-law/) (may be spoilery so if you want to give this a read, you might want to do it after reading the fic).
> 
> I hope I managed to do these character justice. Enjoy the fic, and check out all the other fics in the SPBB2018 collection!

The dumpy little abandoned apartment was empty. Because of course it was.

“Aw, fuck.” Deadpool kicked at a bit of concrete lying on the ground, just like a sulking toddler with a pebble. Unfortunately for Deadpool, the bit of concrete was significantly larger than a pebble, and much less yielding. Instead of the concrete flying up and away, he stubbed his toe. “ _Ow!_ Fuck!”

**_Today is just not our day,_ **Yellow muttered, sulking right along with Deadpool.

**You got that right** , replied White. He, at least, was too much of a _pompous jackass_ to join Deadpool and Yellow in their sulkfest.

**Just because you're in a bad mood, it doesn't give you the right to take it out on** **_me_ **.

“Hey, listen now, it's true and you know it!” Deadpool snapped up toward the ceiling, where he liked to imagine White was lurking. White didn't deign to reply. Seriously: pompous jackass.

Back to the matter at hand, though. Deadpool pulled the scrap of paper with the address of the latest Francis minion out of his back pocket, hoping beyond all hope — yup, nope, still the exact same address as before, apartment 415, the exact shithole he was standing in now. He crumpled the paper and shoved it back into his pocket.

“This sucks balls,” he complained as he crouched down to poke at what was probably a filthy towel pooled on the floor. Ewww, it was stiff. And it crackled suspiciously when he pushed at it. Regret, regret, _regret,_ did this place have running water so he could wash his hand or, better yet, just chop it off and be done with it entirely?

**I don't think you'd want to use this place's sink anyway.**

**_Yeah, ewwwwww, do you think that's a mutant fungus growing in the corner over there?_ **

It looked like it very well could be. Deadpool didn't really want to get any closer for a better look. Seriously, as hardened as his stomach was, that was some _reeeeeal_ nasty shit going on over there. It looked kind of like if a rotten cantaloupe puked into day-old roadkill and then a bucket full of sewage was dumped on top of it all, then someone had the brilliant idea to stir it with an amputated gangrenous set of chlamydia-infected genitals—

Ohhhh. Why did Deadpool do these things to himself. He folded over and breathed shallowly through his mouth, trying to will himself not to puke. Seriously, if he puked it would go all over the inside of his mask, and then he'd be breathing in the sickly sour vomit, which would just set him off again, and—

His stomach roiled. Bad Deadpool. Bad, _bad_ Deadpool.

**Focus!**

Right.

Well, _obviously,_ this place had turned out to be a total bust. One of Deadpool's sources had sworn up and down that one of Francis's minions was in hiding here; either things had changed or Deadpool's source had been lying their pants off, but either way, it meant that Deadpool was, once again, without any leads. Why couldn’t Francis just let Deadpool find him already, so he could finally force the jackass to undo everything that Weapon X had done to him and get his normal face back again?

Deadpool was sorely tempted to take a last look around the apartment — maybe the Francis minion had, like, shrunken to mouse-size and taken up residence in one of the piles of rubble lying around, like a very miniature and evil hermit — but even he wasn’t that masochistic. Time to face the facts: this apartment was a dead end. _Another one._ God dammit, when was Deadpool finally gonna catch up to Bald Asshole so he could force him to fix his face?

**Aww, your plan didn’t work out. Suck it up and deal with it.**

Deadpool rolled his eyes at White. “That ain’t how it works.” He wagged a finger at the ceiling. “This is the _fifth minion_ that’s gotten away from us. We’re entitled to _at least_ a week sulking over this new dead end—”

**_Sulking, boooooring!_ ** Yellow burst out. **_We’ve sulked so much already, I’m tired of it. When’re we gonna find someone so we can do some unaliving already? We’ve just been wandering around the city for the past_ ** **forever** **_, let’s get some action going!_ **

**I agree,** White grumbled, before Deadpool could reprimand Yellow’s childish outburst. **Get your shit together, Deadpool, and find someone so we can** **_do_ ** **something already.**

Deadpool rolled his eyes again. Seriously, these guys. “Fine, fine, I’ll just _get on that_ , as if I haven’t been spending the past two weeks trying to _get on that_ . If you guys are such geniuses, how about _you_ find out where Francis is holed up already?”

**How should we know?**

**_Yeah, how should we know?_ **

Deadpool sighed. The voices tittered and laughed at him from all around.

The apartment stank overwhelmingly of mold and dry piss. As Deadpool looked around one last time — still desperately hoping for a hint of the minion he’d come here looking for, more fool him — the smell, combined with the the dark walls, and the way the shadows fell across the floor, sparked a memory in his mind.

“God _damn_ ,” he said aloud to himself, and dug through his pouches for his phone. “Why didn’t I think of this sooner? Stupid Deadpool, _stupid_ Deadpool—”

**What is it?** White had suddenly grown more alert. Yellow perked up as well.

**_Did you figure out where Francis is?_ **

“Nope,” Deadpool told them as he finally finagled his burner cell out of one of his back pouches — scattering a handful of ammo across the floor as he did so, but whatever, he had plenty of that lying around back home — and flipped it open, scrolling through his contacts until he found the one he was looking for. He grinned. “But I know who can help me figure it out.”

He punched the call button and paced in small, tight circles as the phone rang. And rang. And rang.

“You’d better not have changed your number, you little fuck,” Deadpool cursed as the phone _brrrred_ on like a mocking laugh. “Seriously, fuck, the _one time_ I actually need to talk to you, this is some _important shit_ going on, if you don’t pick up—”

There was a little click, and then a raspy voice drawled down the line, “ _Hi, this is Weasel. Whoever this is, I don’t want to talk to you right now, unless you’re calling because you’ve seen—”_

“Fuck.” Deadpool snapped the phone back shut before Weasel could drone on any longer.

**_I thought you figured out where Francis was._ **

“No,” Deadpool sighed. He shoved the phone back in his pocket and headed back out the apartment, giving a petulant kick to the door swinging half-off its hinges as he went. “I figured out who can help me find him though.”

**Weasel?** White's voice was all scorn. **That blubbering fool? He can barely keep track of his own wallet. How do you expect him to be able to help you find a man who's evaded** **_you_ ** **for this long?**

“Okay, first of all, Weasel may be a bastard but he's no blubbering _anything._ ” Deadpool skipped down the crumbling concrete stairs. Jeez, this place was really falling apart. “And second, he may be a total _fail,_ but he's a fail who runs the most popular criminal bar in the city. If _anyone_ in NYC has sniffed Francis or any of his rats lurking around, Weasel would know.”

**_Weasel!_ ** Yellow seemed strangely ecstatic. **_Are we going to visit Weasel? Gonna make him squeal? Let's make that Weasel_ ** **_squeal._ **

Deadpool drew up short. He was still stuck in that crumbling stairwell, and with his luck, it would collapse on top of him and crush him while he stood here arguing with his voices, but he just could _not_ let Yellow's comment go ignored. “Hey!” He wagged his finger sharply up at the ceiling. “Weasel is a good guy! Sure, be may be a bit of a dork sometimes— Okay fine, he may be a massive dork _all_ the time, but he's still my friend. No touchy.”

**If you say so.** Was Deadpool just imagining things, or did White sound a little sulky?

“Didja hear me? I said, _no touchy._ That includes torture, beheading, delimbing, branding—”

**_Yeah, yeah, whatever you say._ ** Yup. Definitely sulky.

Deadpool went back to skipping down the steps and onto the bustling street. If any of the evening crowd noticed the weird guy in red spandex talking to himself, they gave no indication. God, Deadpool loved New York. “—deblooding, cutting, biting, burning—”

**Aren't you supposed to be trying to stay incognito?** White complained. **How is listing acts of violence on the street supposed to be ‘staying incognito’?**

“—paralyzing, waterboarding, crippling, tickling—”

**We get it! Whiny Weasel stays off-limits.**

“Good,” Deadpool said firmly, and then skipped right down into the nearest subway station. He’d forgotten his wallet, otherwise he totally would’ve taxied, but the drivers seemed to have an odd aversion to giving upaid rides.

 

* * *

 

It was a musky, smelly, forty-minute subway ride before Deadpool found himself staring up at the familiar peeling banner atop St. Margaret’s bar.

**God, I forgot how disgusting this place is.**

“At least there aren’t leave any pools of blood lying around this time.” Deadpool giggled to himself — there’d been one time when St. Margaret’s had been an absolute _bloodbath_ , that’d been a great time — and skipped right on into the bar, heading right up to the counter...where a burly, bearded man who was distinctly _not_ Weasel was wiping down a few glasses.

Deadpool propped an elbow up on the bar and cocked a hip. “Hey there, man. Ooh, look at those biceps, that’s a _sweet_ pair you’ve got right there.”

Biceps glared at him as he continued wiping down the glasses and stacking them in a neat pile before him.

Deadpool kept right on talking. “So, is Weasel around somewhere? In the back, maybe? I’ve gotta talk to him about some business, y’know — _business_ , you know how it goes — but he’s not picking up his cell, so. Any chance you could call him out for me?”

Biceps slammed the last glass down on the counter — **_whoo boy! Someone’s got anger management issues_ ** — and growled, “There’s no Weasel around here.”

“Awww, come on.” Deadpool held up both his hands in mock supplication. “I know he’s here, he’s _gotta_ be here. You know Weasel. Bartender, came with the bar, will die with the bar. About yay tall—” Deadpool held his hand up to chin level. Okay, so maybe he was exaggerating a bit, but Weasel was wimpy enough that it was _basically_ accurate. “—greasy hair, disgusting smirk, oversized hipster glasses?”

Biceps kept staring at Deadpool with his narrowed, lifeless eyes. “You’re Wade? Wade Wilson?”

Deadpool sighed and drooped over the counter. “I mean, well. I _mean_ , yeah, I _guess_ , but I usually like to keep business and pleasure separate, you know — Deadpool when the costume’s on, Wade Wilson when it’s off, aka _never_ , so I guess Wade Wilson is more my alter ego at this point than Deadpool is—”

“I’ll call him for you,” Biceps interrupted before Deadpool could go on another rant about the woeful life of a merc with a face like a shitfountain explosion. “Left his number here a while ago. Give me just a minute.”

And Biceps ambled off before Deadpool could think to ask: what did he mean, Weasel had _left his number there?_ Weasel _worked_ there. He practically _owned_ the place. St. Margaret’s wasn’t St. Margaret’s without Weasel there to stink up the building — so what, exactly, did Biceps mean, he was going to _call Weasel up?_

“What do you mean, you’re going to _call him up?_ ” Deadpool demanded when Biceps returned a few minutes later, cradling an ancient block of a phone in the crook between his ear and his — massive, _massive_ — neck. “Isn’t he working here tonight?”

Biceps snorted, still keeping the phone pressed to his ear. From the other side of the bar, Deadpool could just make out a ringing tone. “Jack? Jack doesn’t work here anymore. Quit ages ago.”

Deadpool was still trying to process this — _Weasel had quit bartending at St. Margaret’s? Had Hell finally turned into tundra?_ — when Biceps said loudly, “Hey there, Jack, bud. The guy you told me about, Wade Wilson, he’s here for you.” A pause. “Just a mo’.” And he handed the phone over to Deadpool, who snatched it up without hesitation.

Weasel was saying something loud and high-pitched on the other side of the line, but Deadpool ignored it to demand, “You _quit working_ at _St. Margaret’s?_ What the hell happened, did you get replaced by pod people while I was away?”

“ _Wade?”_ Weasel’s voice was loud and tinny and way, way faster than usual. “ _Jesus Christ, Wilson, are you at St. Margaret’s? Why the fuck are you at St. Margaret’s?_ ”

“Why the fuck aren’t _you_ at St. Margaret’s?” Deadpool snarked back, but Weasel just went right on talking.

“ _Okay, well, whatever, I don’t actually care, just as long as you_ stay _there. You are staying there, right? I swear to god, if I drag my ass all the way across the city just to find out you’ve_ left _, I’m going to be pissed.”_

“Why would I want to stay here?” Deadpool asked, bemused, and then, “Hold on, what do you mean _dragging your ass here?_ Now you decide to show up? What’s this bullshit?”

“ _Fucking honestly,_ ” Weasel muttered on the other end, considerably more muffled and staticky than before — couldn’t the asshole at least have the decency to speak directly into the phone? “ _Showing up at fucking St. Margaret’s of all places, you fucking pain in the ass._ ”

**What’re you wasting time with Weasel for?** White hissed into Deadpool’s ear. **I thought you came here for leads on Francis, but I’m not seeing any leads popping up. Have you forgotten what you came here for?**

“Aw, come on White, hold your horses,” Deadpool complained as White kept huffing and grumbling his impatience. “Weasel and I’ve said like two sentences to each other, untwist your panties, we’re getting there, okay?”

“ _Say what?_ ” Weasel was back now, loud and whiny as ever. “ _You’re not talking to Logan over there, are you?”_

**_Nope, you’re talking to us! Your very most favorite voices in your head! Who’d loooooove to get their hands on the weasel’s body and make him_ ** **scream.**

Aw, crap. Now he had to deal with Yellow’s senseless yammering on top of White’s endless complaints? Fucking christ.

Deadpool sighed and leaned back against the counter. Biceps had gone down to the other end of the bar to stack up his newly-wiped glasses — it was still early in the evening, way before the normal crowd would come swarming in, so the two of them were the only souls in the building for now — but Deadpool swore he was starting to give him some strange looks.

**Better clear out soon before he decides you’re trouble and kicks you out.**

“ _Wade? Waaaaaaade. Wade motherfuckin’ Wilson, if you’ve left already—_ ”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Deadpool sighed. “Listen, I just wanted to ask you for a favor and then I’ll be right out of your hair.”

“ _Alright, listen here, you cocksucking little shit, if you hang up now I swear to god I’ll hunt you down and, and—”_

Weasel was in a _state_ tonight. What was up with that?

“Sure, whatever. Listen, have you heard anything recently about where Francis might be?”

“ _\--and, I don’t know, I’ll feed you pig testicles or some— Hold the fuck on. Francis?_ ”

“What, your ears don’t work anymore?” Deadpool snarked down the line. “You heard me. Francis. Bald, assholey, would look way cuter with a black eye and bloody nose?”

“ _Francis Freeman? What the fuck are you looking for Ajax for?”_

Deadpool snorted. “Are you kidding? I’ve only been hunting him for the past _three years_. You know, to get him to fix my face? Just—” He tipped his head back and sighed. “Do you know where he is or not?”

“ _Uh, lemme think..... Yeeeeah, definitely not. Anyway, I’m almost there, so—”_

“Awwww fuck, thanks for wasting my time.” **Told you it was a bad idea.** “Shut up, White, no one likes a smartass! Fuck. Well, thanks for nothing I guess, but if you’ve got nothing for me I’ve gotta go—”

“ _Wade? Wade, I swear to god if you hang up this phone—”_

Deadpool hung up with a firm, satisfying push of the ‘end call’ button. Not quite as dramatic as a flip phone, but he’d make do.

“What an ass,” he grumbled to himself as he made his way down to where Biceps had switched over to reordering the bottles on the wall, and handed the phone over.

**Took you long enough to realize.**

**_I don’t_ ** **like** **_him. He smells._ **

“He’s not even here, how do you know he smells?” Deadpool shot back at Yellow. When he turned around, Biceps was definitely giving him a funny look.

Deadpool waved his hand. “ _Voices._ You know how they are.” He rolled his eyes up at the ceiling. “I mean, I’d glare at my own head if I could, but I don’t think even _I_ can — or actually, maybe I can—?”

“Right.” Biceps looked very much like he did _not_ want to find out whether or not Deadpool actually could. “You doin’ okay there, bud?”

Deadpool blinked at him. Then swiveled around a few times, searching all around the bar for other signs of life. Nope: Biceps was definitely talking to him.

“Me?” He pointed an over-exaggerated finger at himself in mock shock. “Am _I_ doing okay? Ohhhhh, man. You have no idea.”

Biceps narrowed his eyes at him again, looking far more constipated than hostile this time, but before he could say anything, the phone started ringing again.

“Well, there’s my cue, I guess. Toodles!” Deadpool waved at Biceps, who, _rude_ , didn’t wave back, and turned and ambled off as Biceps picked up the phone again.

**What a waste of time.**

**_Yeah! We didn’t even get to make the weasel SQUEAL._ **

“I already told you,” Deadpool scolded as he pushed the door to the bar open, “Weasel is a strictly _no-touching_ off-limits zone—”

“HEY!”

Deadpool stopped short. Slowly, he turned to look over his shoulder.

Biceps was making his lumbering way around the bar, phone pressed firmly to his ear. His face looked thunderous.

“YOU THERE! WILSON! STOP RIGHT THERE!”

“Time to run,” Deadpool said up to the sky, and then shoved the door the rest of the way open and ran.

**_CHASE!_ ** Yellow sounded _way_ happier than the situation called for. **_FOOTCHASE! RUNRUNRUNRUNRUN GO YESSSSSSSS!_ **

Meanwhile, White was hollering into Deadpool’s ear, **What’re you running for? You’re a merc with** **_five guns_ ** **on your body! Stop running away like a little pansy, go back, hold your ground, point a gun at his head and shoot if he doesn’t tell you what he’s after you for!**

“Easy for you to say, you guys are just disembodied voices who’ve never had to experience the pain of death,” Deadpool panted as he ducked and wove his way around the thinning crowds, and he slipped into a side alley — barely more than a crack in the wall; for once he was grateful for his lack of booty because if his ass were any more luscious, there was no way he would’ve been able to squeeze into that space — just in time to hear the booming, “WADE WILSON, COME BACK HERE!” that reverberated all down the street.

**Go back! Go back and** **_shoot_ ** **him, who does that shit think he is—**

**_RUNRUNRUNRUN! GOGOGOGO CHASE! CHASE! FOOTCHASE! HAHAHAHA!_ **

Fuck, Deadpool really hated his voices sometimes.

_I am NOT IN SHAPE ENOUGH for a footchase, skipped too many cardio days at the gym_ , he didn’t say to Yellow, and _No I am NOT going to SHOOT Biceps, for one that’d be a waste of some good arm candy and for another we’re never going to capture Francis if we don’t keep a LOW PROFILE,_ he didn’t snap at White to shut him up. Instead he just sucked in his stomach to try to keep it from scraping up against the other side of the alley and listened to his heart pound away from his five-second dash, as he waited for Bicep’s hollering to fade away.

While he waited, he cursed ever deciding that asking Weasel for help would be a good idea. Why would he ever go to Weasel for help? Weasel couldn’t help his own sorry ass out of a paper box if his life depended on it.

Deadpool bit his lip and silently fumed through the two voices screaming into his ears, both overly excited, both overly raged, wishing he could just make them _shut up_ but not willing to yell at them to _shut up_ lest he give away his hiding spot to Biceps and be forced to resort to drastic measures to get away. Finally the Bicep’s voice petered out and disappeared, but Deadpool made himself stay in his crack-in-the-wall for a few minutes longer, just in case. It turned out to be a good thing he did, because it was just when he decided the coast was clear that he heard a familiar too-thin and too-fast voice from down the street, slowly but steadily rising in volume and pitch:

“What do you _mean_ he’s not here anymore? You let him _get away?_ What are you, a fucking idiot? Did your mother drop you on your head as a baby? Repeatedly? Do you drink mercury for fun? Eat thermometers like lollipops? Christ, the _fuck_ —”

**Told you that going to the weasel for help was a bad idea.** White sounded unbearably smug, and for once, Deadpool didn’t have it in him to argue back.

From the sounds of things, Weasel had been trying to — what, see Deadpool? Talk to him? No, it sounded more like he’d been trying to _capture_ him, and what the fuck would Weasel want to capture Deadpool for? The only explanation Deadpool could think of was that Weasel had _sold Deadpool out_.

Anger flared hot in his gut. The rat was probably in league with Francis. He’d probably helped Francis feed Deadpool that false information about the minion in the shitty apartment — it’d be just like Weasel, scurrying to save his own ass and fill his own greedy paws without any thought for anyone else, least of all Deadpool. Christ, and he’d thought they were _friends_ or some shit. That Weasel would help Deadpool find the guy who’d turned his face into an exploded mindfield, and force him to turn it back to normal. Instead, Weasel had gone over to Francis’s side, like he didn’t even know or care about everything Francis had done to him.

**What have I been telling you? You can’t trust Weasel.**

For once, Deadpool was forced to concede.

He continued fuming, anger burning steadily brighter and brighter and hotter and hotter, as White continued his snide, smug commentary into Deadpool’s right ear, and Yellow continued his jittery jabbering into Deadpool’s left ear, and through it all Weasel’s angry, traitorous, squealing voice threaded so it was impossible for him to deny the betrayal, Weasel’s blatant betrayal, the little _fucker_ —

It took a few minutes for him to realise Weasel’s voice was gone. Hopefully, the traitor scurried back into whatever rathole he’d come from, and wouldn’t be re-emerging anytime soon.

**You should hunt him down. Give him a taste of his own medicine. I bet he’d tell you where Francis is in exchange for a few of his fingers and toes.**

**_Fingers and toes — boooooring! Make a necklace out of his ears, that’s_ ** **so** **_much more classy._ **

“Shut the fuck up,” Deadpool muttered to the voices as he shimmied his way back out of the alley. He knocked his elbows and knees a few times against the brick, scraped his shoulder against the rough wall, but ignored all the little aches and stings of pain: they’d heal right up soon anyway, and besides, it was nothing compared to some of the other things he’d been through. For example: discovering Weasel had apparently sold him out to Francis. _Fuck_ , he’d really thought he could depend on the little rat.

**_Didn’t you learn anything from Peter Pettigrew? Tsk tsk tsk, never trust the rodents._ **

“Point,” Deadpool conceded, and made his way down the street, away from St. Margaret’s. Well, Weasel could go fuck himself, anyway. Deadpool didn’t need that rat’s help to find Francis. He’d gotten this far on his own, he could get the rest of the way on his own too. Come out come out wherever you are, Francis darling, the merc with a mouth was on his way to—

“Wade!”

His head snapped up as he looked about wildly for wherever that voice had come from. Too smooth to be Weasel, too high to be Biceps, but familiar, who else could it be, who else in New York City would call Deadpool by his real name—?

**Spidey.**

**_Spidey!_ **

“Spidey,” Deadpool hissed, making a cutthroat gesture in a clear sign to _stop, shut up, NOW_ , but Spidey was clearly not well-versed in street hand signals because he just kept right running right at him.

“What are you doing here? I thought you were at St. Margaret’s—”

“ _Shhhh,_ ” Deadpool hissed furiously, and Spidey obediently clammed right up, though his mask was all wrinkles as he presumably scrunched his face up in confusion. Quickly, Deadpool gestured for Spidey to follow him, and he lead them around the corner, then down another alley to end up beside a dumpster in a well-littered alleyway.

As soon as they stopped there, Spidey burst out, “Weasel told me you were here but I thought you were at St. Margaret’s, what are you doing here? You’ve been gone for _weeks_ —”

“Awww, Webs!” Deadpool cooed, and squeezed his own face between his hands to fight the urge to glomp Spidey. He didn’t feel like spending the night webbed up against the wall, waiting for the sticky fibers to dissolve so he could worm his way free, like he’d had to do so many times before. “I didn’t know you _cared!_ Shucks, why didn’t you just say so, I would've called you up the moment I got here just to let you know—”

Spidey shook his head and crossed his arms tightly over his chest, watching Deadpool with far more suspicion than Deadpool felt the situation warranted. He wasn't even doing anything for once! He wasn't even armed! Well, much.

“Where have you been, Wade?”

“Ooh, I didn't know we were on a first name basis,” Deadpool cooed, but Spidey was unfazed.

“I’ve been looking all around the city for you, but you haven’t been showing up anywhere. What’re you up to?”

“I'm up to hit _you_ up.” Deadpool made a few squeezing gestures and smooching sounds in Spidey's direction. Spidey just kept glaring at him with narrowed eyes.

Slowly, Deadpool lowered his arms until they were dangling once again limply at his sides. A woman scurried past them, glancing furtively over her shoulder at Deadpool as she went, and suddenly Deadpool felt the overwhelming urge to plant a bullet right between her glittery, overly-lined eyes.

**Not with Spider-Man standing right there.** **_Especially_ ** **not when he looks ready to dropkick you at any moment.**

**_Yeah, jeez, what crawled into his suit and died?_ **

Deadpool ignored the voices, instead just swallowing hard and glancing down at the ground.

“Well. Anyway.” He cleared his throat — cliched move, yeah, but he really did need a few moments to collect himself as he figured out what to say next. Plus, his throat was a bit dry. “Don't worry, Spidey, I'm not here to unalive anyone—”

“To _what?_ ”

“Jeez,” he said, a little offended now. “Calm your feelers, Webs, I said I'm _not_ here to unalive anyone, so don't worry about me causing a mess for you to have to clean up or anything. Well, I might beat up Francis a little bit if I find them, but other than that, I'm not here for anything naughty, so can we skip the whole, you know—” He propped a fist on his hip, jutted one hip obscenely out to the side, and said, in a voice way higher than he'd ever heard Spidey's, “ _'Don't go causing any trouble on my turf, Deadpool, or I'm gonna make you leave!’_ routine we go through every time? Seriously, it's rude, and it's getting boring. Zero out of five stars on Yelp, crappy welcome to the city.”

“Hold on.” Spidey had stiffened up a little, and taken the puniest little step forward, as though fighting the urge to grab onto Deadpool and not let him go. Deadpool scurried back in response, keeping an eye out for those web shooters he knew Spidey was hiding on his wrists. Seriously, he was not looking to get webbed up today, white was so not his colour. “Did you say you're looking for... Francis?”

**_Looking for Francis,_ ** Yellow sang as Deadpool pondered how much to lie. **_Looking for Francis, ready to flay Francis, scalp him, skin him, burn him alive and turn his skull into a cocktail glass—_ **

**Don't tell him,** White barked at the same time. _Fuck_ they were loud. **If he finds out you're here for anything even** **_remotely_ ** **resembling a hit, he'll have you out of New York before you can even say 'Manhattan’. Heck, he'll probably even get his Avengers buddies to help him get you out, and to make sure you** **_stay_ ** **out.**

“Fuck, what do you think I am, an idiot?” Deadpool cursed up at the sky. Spidey seemed startled by the sudden outburst. “I know all that already! Did you really have to _scream_ it at me so _loudly?_ ”

“Who—”

“Just the fucking voices,” Deadpool snapped at Spidey, whose mask-wrinkles of confusion did not fade. Whatever, not Deadpool's problem. He launched into his tirade before Spidey could regain his posture and decide to finally kick Deadpool out of NYC, for good. “Anyway, it was nice seeing you again and all, it was _especially_ good to see that ass—” He leaned over to the side to catch a better view of those pert round globes, let out a whistle of appreciation, and then straightened back up. “--but I’ve kind of got some urgent business coming up, soooooo if you don’t mind I’m just gonna go now...”

He took a tentative step to the side.

“Wait!”

Yup, fuck that. He ran.

He could still Spidey shouting something behind him, but he ignored it all, focusing on dashing across the busy street — New York traffic, what a classic — without getting barreled over or hit by any projectiles thrown by angry motorists. He only slowed down once he’d hit the sidewalk at the other side, and even then, just enough to check if Spidey was chasing him. The friendly neighborhood superhero was still standing on the other side of the street, fists clenched and muscles tensed, but somehow — _somehow_ — not yet swinging his way over to follow Deadpool. He wouldn’t question it; no use questioning small miracles.

“Sorry about that!” he hollered at Spidey, and gave him two massive thumbs-up as he jogged backward, leaving Spidey faaaar behind. “Can’t get thrown out of NYC though, not done my business here yet. I’ll see you around, Webs!”

“Wade,” Spidey called after him, but it was feeble, meek, and Deadpool could tell that he wasn’t going to make any more effort beyond that last word.

He blew Spidey a kiss and jogged away.

 

* * *

  

Deadpool’s latest squat was a dumpy little apartment, obviously abandoned for years, but it was the only place he’d been able to find on such short notice, and though the ground and walls may have been overrun with crap, it wasn’t that big a deal, considering he was only staying there short-term.

Well. When he’d first found the place, he’d thought that he’d only be staying in it short-term. That looked like it would change though, if he couldn’t just _find Francis already._

“Where could he even be hiding?” Deadpool groaned up at the ceiling as he sprawled across a relatively clean section of floor. Relatively clean meaning that he’d probably only burn his suit when he was done with this place, and not the upper few layers of his skin as well, to get rid of all the contamination. Seriously, this place was a _dump_. “New York’s not that big, is it?”

**_Mmmm, it’s real nice and big. Plenty of little alleys to ambush someone and carve out their lungs!_ **

“Ew, Yellow, what would you want a random stranger’s lungs for? What if they’re all black and nasty from smoking, have you seen the warning pictures they put on cigarette boxes? It’s enough to make a man lose his lunch.”

**_But lungs are so soft and squishy._ ** Yellow sounded pouty. **_Like a really fluffy pillow. Why don’t we have a pillow?_ ** Yup, definitely pouty.

**If we had a pillow, we’d just end up having to burn it anyway. Have you really not thought of** **_anything?_ **

Deadpool wagged a finger up at the ceiling. “Ex-cuh-uze _you_ , mister, I don’t see you offering any bright ideas there.”

**Because that’s supposed to be your job.**

“Avoiding responsibility much?” White growled. “Okay, okay, jeez, don’t get your panties in a twist, I’ll think of something.”

With a low, long groan, Deadpool pulled himself back upright. White waited impatiently as Yellow continued chittering about pillows and plushies in the background.

**Well?**

“Gimme a mo’.” Deadpool raised his arms high above his head and _streeetched_ . There was a popping sound somewhere in his back. Ooh, yeah, that felt _good_.

**I said,** **_well?_ **

“Pushy, pushy. I bet you expect girls to put out on the first date, tell me, how well does that go for you?” White fumed, and Deadpool hastily said, before the voice could _really_ lose his temper, “Okay, okay, I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Let’s see, if I was a bald sack of shit trying to hide in one of the busiest cities in the country, where would I be?”

**_In the sewer?_ **

**That only happens in comics. Get your head straight, Yellow.**

**_I can’t, because I ain’t got a head! Can’t get my head straight~ if I haven’t got any head~_ **

**Listen to me, you little idiot, I’ll show you no head—**

Fucking Christ. Deadpool rubbed at his face as both White and Yellow burst into a sudden, vicious argument that had Deadpool’s head pounding and ears ringing. These two wouldn’t be any help, they never were. Why would they be? The boxes seemed to exist for the sole purpose of making his life as difficult as possible.

As they bickered, Deadpool planted his hands firmly over his ears — ha, as if that would do anything to block out the noise — and hummed softly to himself. If he were Francis, hiding from the merc with a mouth out for his blood, where would he be hiding? As far as cities went, he supposed New York wasn’t a bad one to lay low in for a while, and Yellow had had a point when he’d pointed out that there were plenty of boltholes to hide away in. Francis presumably had higher standards than Deadpool did, though, which somewhat limited the possible places he could be — plus, he was probably rolling in dough thanks to Weapon X, unlike Deadpool who was still saving up for a chimichangas night out — but that was still... oh, several hundred places where he could be?

Deadpool was screwed. No kinder way to put it.

**Are you kidding me? You’re giving up** **_already?_ ** **Are you even trying? Do you actually even care?**

And there was White, back from the argument, and right on time, too. “Well, have you got any better ideas?”

**Literally** **_any_ ** **idea would be better than your idea. Because you don’t have any ideas.**

“Thanks for stating the obvious.”

The obvious. The _obvious._

Deadpool jumped to his feet, eyes wide, and flailed his arms. “The obvious!”

**Has your brain stopped working now, too? Fucking hell.**

“No!” Deadpool jabbed a finger up at the ceiling and beamed. How had he not seem this before? “The _obvious!_ We still haven’t even searched the most obvious place!”

**_Red light district?_ **

Deadpool shuddered at the involuntary mental image of Francis getting frisky with a buxom, long-legged blonde. That was _not_ something he would’ve ever wanted to picture, thank you very much Yellow for giving him that thought. “No — jeez, Yellow, what goes through your brain? No, remember when we signed up for the Weapon X program? Back when we were still devastatingly gorgeous?”

**Have you begun imagining things on top of the plain idiocy now?**

Deadpool scowled. “Fuck off, White. Well, there was that address we had to visit first, right? Before we got packed up into one of those pedophile vans and taken off to the actual lab. We still haven’t checked that address.”

**_Ooooh, the fake gym place? I want to go to a fake gym place. I bet there’re secret cage fights in the basement!_ **

“What is this, fight club? No, there are _not_ secret cage fights in the basement. I don’t think they even _have_ a basement. Anyway, my point is, we haven’t been there yet, so we should totally, you know, head over there and see if there are any leads there about where Francis is hiding. Or at least any leads to other places that can help us find him.”

**That’s a semi-decent idea, I guess.** Wade could practically hear White rolling his eyes. **Took you long enough.**

“Shut up, at least I came up with _something._ ”

**And do you really think they won’t have cleared out the place already? Really?**

Okay, they probably had, but still — at least it was _something_ . Still better than the big fat load of _nothing_ that White had come up with.

**Hey there, punk, I’ll show you—**

“Right-o!” Deadpool announced, and began shoving his stuff into his pouches as quickly as possible. Handgun; other handgun; handful of ammo; couple of magazines, hopefully they were still full; knife, knife, knife, burner phone... Finally he strapped his katanas to his back and checked all around him for anything he might’ve missed. Other than scattered rubble and questionable organic material, there was nothing.

“All right! Francis, ready or not, here we come!”

**In ten years,** White snarked as Deadpool headed out the door. **Maybe. If this leads to anything. If not, maybe twenty years. Probably thirty. Possibly forty.**

**_Yay! Secret underground cage fights! Oooh, can we join, can we join?_ **

Deadpool _really_ hated his voices sometimes.

 

* * *

 

He still didn’t have enough cash for a cab, and the last time he’d tried to stiffy his driver, _Spider-Man_ of all people had ended up swooping in and holding him hostage until he coughed up. So he decided to take the subway instead. He hated the subway — everyone always looked at him funny; like, _hello,_ had no one ever seen a man in a spandex body suit on the subway before? Where was the New York native attitude when you needed it? — but it was better than having _Spidey_ giving him another lecture on proper behaviour again. Especially after everything that had happened the day before. He should probably steer clear of Spidey for a while, give the superhero some time to cool off before he ogled that ass again.

The fake gym was all the way on the other side of the city, so Deadpool spent an uncomfortable forty minutes seated beside an old lady who smelt too much like cat urine for comfort. Better than his own gunpowder and blood smell, he supposed, but still: old people. Ew.

She got up and moved away halfway through the trip, though, which may have been because she was getting just as sick of his smell as he was growing of hers, or because he’d snapped at White to get him to shut up about his, quite frankly, nauseating rant about old-people-smells. Voices, what could you do?

It took a while for him to finally reach his destination. Then it was a few minutes of strolling down the street, and there it was. In all its concrete glory.

**‘Captain Fitness’? What a lame name.**

“I think it’s kinda cute,” Deadpool retorted, as he tilted his head to the side and peered up at the sign. It was way more attention-grabbing than he would’ve anticipated for a cover-up business, all bold blocky white letters on black, a few stylized [icons] tossed here and there. Big, too. Overcompensating? “Kinda funny, actually. Oh god, you don’t think Francis came up with the name, do you? If he came up with the name I’m going to have to shoot myself, I _cannot_ live with myself complimenting _anything_ that asshat has done—”

**_Are we gonna go in yet? I wanna see the underground cage fights!_ **

**I thought we already established that there are** **_no underground cage fights,_ ** White groused. Deadpool took that as his cue to hurry inside, before they could descend yet another screaming fight.

The inside of the building was harshly lit, no natural sunlight making its way in through the painted-over windows. It was nice and clean, black walls and flooring with a high, exposed ceiling. Very industrial. Very professional. A bit of a modern vibe. It looked like a stylish gym where you might expect a couple of motorcyclists to hang out before their weekly Friday night drinks.

In short: nothing like a cover-up business for a dubiously legal government program.

“Excuse me, sir? Can I help you with anything?”

Deadpool spared the short Indian man sitting behind the counter only the briefest of glances. “No thanks, kiddo, I’m all good. I’m just gonna pop in there for a minute, that’s totally fine, right? Okay, thanks—”

“I am sorry, sir, but you will require a gym membership to pass beyond this point.” The receptionist sounded annoyingly cheerful, and when Deadpool swiveled to stare at him, his beaming smile proved just as bright as his voice.

**Annoying.**

**_Chop him up! Chop him chop him chop him chophimchophim—_ **

“All right.” Deadpool strode up to the counter, propped up his elbows, and leaned forward. The receptionist continued to beam at him. “Listen here, you— What’s your name?”

“Dopinder, sir,” the man replied cheerily. “And you, sir?”

“Pool. Dead.”

Dopinder reached a hand out over the counter. Deadpool took it and firmly shook. Oh, god, he could feel himself getting swept up into the receptionist’s aura of happiness. He needed to shake himself out of it, _now_ , before he found himself agreeing to a twelve-month membership and weekly sessions with a personal trainer.

“Right.” Deadpool released the handshake and stared Dopinder straight in the eye. Dopinder’s smile, unnervingly, didn’t so much as twitch. “Okay, Dopinder, listen up here: I’m just looking for someone that I think _might_ be in this gym. I don’t know for sure; it’s been a while, he’s a bit of a slippery bastard. So can I just pop my head in, take a real quick peek around? I swear on my right hand that I won’t so much as _breathe_ on any of your equipment.”

Dopinder’s brow furrowed with gentle confusion.

Deadpool held up his right hand and pointed at it. “Swear. It’s my good hand too, my shooting hand, it’ll be a fucking pain to regrow. Come on, just a real quick little peek?”

Dopinder furrowed his brow at Deadpool’s hand. Furrowed his brow down at the computer monitor in front of him. Furrowed his brow up at the clock on the wall.

“Well,” he said finally, “it will be a very quick peek, you understand—”

“ _Whoo mama!_ ” Deadpool hooted, and double fist-pumped the air. “Francis, I’m coming for you!”

“The current trainer will be returning from break shortly,” Dopinder was continuing, but Deadpool had already tuned him out.

“Are we ready to find ourselves some bald asshat?”

**About time.**

**_Shoot him up! Shoot him up shoot him up shoothimupshoothimupshoothimUP—_ **

“Oh, I’ll empty a whole _clip_ into him,” Deadpool sneered, and strode into the gym.

The men’s locker room was empty, but that was all right. The real prize would be in the gym. The gym, which was....startlingly empty.

That wasn’t to say that it was _completely_ empty or anything. There was plenty of equipment lying around: enough treadmills for a whole legion of soccer moms to go jogging; enough weights for an entire frat house to go lifting; enough open floor space for a dozen vegans to practice their sun salutations and downward dogs. There was, however, a conspicuous lack of what really mattered: people.

A pair of bikers. Three lonely men on the weights machines. One woman by the dumbells, another on a stepper, a third in the middle of either a warm-up or cool-down routine.

No Francis.

“Well, I guess it was a bit of a stretch to hope that he’d be here,” Deadpool commented. “Still doesn’t mean the lead’s dead, though.”

He started with one of the bikers.

“Excuse me.” He tapped her on the shoulder and waited for her to pull her earbuds out. “Do you—”

“There are plenty of free bikes, this one’s occupied,” she said irritably, and cast a long, disapproving glance over his whole body before popping her earbud back in and going back to her cycling.

**_Whaaaat? RUDE._ **

**We should teach her a lesson. Her Achilles tendons are pretty exposed—**

“ _Low cover,_ ” Deadpool said aloud, and went to the other biker, only to receive more or less the same response.

It was the same with the weight lifters. And with the stretching lady. In the end, Deadpool was stuck with no useful information and the most frustrating dilemma.

**_Do you think they’re just pretending? Like, maybe they’re just here to make the gym_ ** **seem** **_like a real gym—_ **

**Or they might think this gym is just a normal gym, and the gym itself is a cover for the serious shit. Look around, see if anyone looks out of the ordinary. If we don’t find anything, we’ll corner the receptionist and make him talk.**

“What? No, there’s no way he knows anything,” Deadpool argued as he walked toward the wall. If his spatial awareness served him correctly, there wasn’t enough extra room in the walls for hidden rooms or stairwells, but it was worth checking out anyway. Maybe something was hidden in the locker rooms? “Did you see how cheerful he was? Nobody working for a secret government torture program could fake being that happy all the time.”

He was examining the wall for any cracks that could indicate a secret doorway when he heard the creak of the locker room doors opening. Instinctively, he looked up; always a good idea to keep an eye on the entry and exit points of a room, especially when in potentially hostile territory.

What he saw was a woman with fiery red hair standing right in front of the door to the women’s locker rooms. A woman with fiery red hair who was staring right back at him.

He swallowed hard.

“There’s no way she’s actually looking at _me_ , right?” he whispered under his breath as she slowly stepped forward. In his direction. “She’s probably just _reeeally_ concerned about where she wants to start her workout. Like, arm day versus leg day? What is she really— Aw, _crap_.”

He recognized the woman. Any doubts he’d had about this gym being a cover-up instantly vanished. Unfortunately, so did his hopes of the gym being a cover-up for Weapon X, right along with his chances of getting out of there scot-free.

The woman approaching him was Natalie Rushman, A.K.A. Natasha Romanova, A.K.A. the Black Widow, A.K.A. a member of the fucking _Avengers_ who were firstly _definitely_ not associated with Weapon X, and secondly always after Deadpool to get out of New York City and take the chaos that that he constantly caused elsewhere.

**_Ooooh, we fuuuuucked._ **

**You’re fucked.**

“Thanks for letting me know,” he whispered furiously at the voices as he began inching along the wall. Maybe if he moved slowly enough, and stuck close enough to the walls, he could get out without being noticed? Ha, yeah right, she was definitely beelining straight for him.

“Guys. Thoughts?”

**_You dun fuuuuuuuucked._ **

**You’re completely and royally fucked.**

“As always, you’re both _so_ much help!” he snapped, and oh, regrets, regrets, Black Widow seemed to have sped up at his outburst, and now he was faced with a difficult choice: did he continue his futile attempt at stealth, or did he just make a run for it?

He chose the only sane option: option B. Regrettably, so did she.

“Hey, watch it!” one of the weightlifters snapped when Deadpool barreled over him, praying desperately that he would luck out and manage to escape before Black Widow could intercept him and cut him off. It was like a game of monkey-in-the-middle, except the monkey was on the end instead of the middle, and there was no ball, and the person in the middle was a really leggy redhead trying to keep the monkey away from the middle, and yeah that analogy was falling apart so Deadpool was gonna stop right there just as he skidded to a halt in the middle of the weight machines, stuck face-to-face with the Black Widow herself.

“Hey there, Widow!” he greeted her, and took the chance to straighten from his crouch to shoot her cocky finger guns. Unlike him, she remained tense and coiled up, staring at him with cold, flinty eyes. “Black Widow, jeez, they should’ve called you black panther instead, you’ve got the right stance for it — you’re a fighter, a champ, gonna hear you roar — but anyway, do you mind if I just squeeze by you?” He stepped cautiously to the side; she mirrored him. There went that plan. “It’s not that I’m not happy to see you, really I’m _ecstatic_ , that’s definitely _not_ a gun in my pocket, it’s just that I need to go, I’m a bit—”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

Her voice was just as cold — even colder — than her eyes, and Deadpool’s hand twitched instinctively to his guns. Her gaze didn’t follow the movement toward his hip, but he had no doubt that she was tracking it anyway, and on high alert for any further motion.

He made his voice as wheedling as possible. “Even if I promise to hop on a bus, one-way ride out of the city, as soon as I’m out?”

Her expression grew even _more_ cold. Jeez, was that even possible? “ _Especially_ not then.”

He blinked at her, taken aback. “Sorry, what? It’s just — you’re giving me a lot of mixed signals here. One minute you do-gooders want me out of the city, and now you don’t want me to leave — seriously, what’s your endgame here? A man can only be pulled in so many directions—”

The locker room door creaked open again. Neither Deadpool nor Black Widow looked away from their death glare-match.

“Miss Romanoff?” Dopinder called from the doorway. “I have contacted Mister Rogers, he is on his way back shortly and will be returning soon. Do you need any further— Oh, Mister Pool! I did not realize you were still here.”

Deadpool waved at him cheerfully. “Hi there, Dopinder!”

Dopinder waved cheerily back.

“Could you do me a real solid, here, and get Miss Romanoff here out of the room for a bit? I just need—”

“Dopinder, go back to the front desk,” Black Widow said, voice low and carrying. Dopinder’s grin remained as dopey as ever, but he stood a little straighter, as if coming to attention.

“Of course, Miss Romanoff! I will let you know as soon as Mister Rogers has arrived.”

The door creaked back shut, and the stare-off continued.

“Seriously though,” Deadpool tried, after another solid five seconds of minimal movement. Patience had never been one of his strong suits. “I really need to pee, can this wait?”

“No.”

He spread his hands out before him, both palms open and weapon-free. “Well, if you _really_ insist, I guess I could just go in my suit—”

“Gross, dude!” one of the weightlifters called. Black Widow blinked twice in quick succession, and Deadpool took that moment’s distraction as his chance to strike.

He threw himself over the nearest bench and landed in a roll, aiming to pop back up directly to the Widow’s right side. He hit his target, but she was prepared, and was already beside him, reaching to grab hold of his arms and trap them before he was even all the way right-side-up again. He was prepared as well, though, and swept out a leg to trip her, which she easily jumped over, flipping lithely through the air to land in front of where he’d been half on his back. He was already rolling to the side, back under the bench he’d leapt over, and got up on one knee just in time for Black Widow to launch herself at him and wrap her thighs around his neck.

“Signature move,” he grunted, and they both went down with a clatter.

“If it works, it works,” she hissed back at him, already wrapped like a particularly busty and redhaired octopus around his arm.

He grimaced as her hold tightened and his arm was stretched out to the point of sharp, burning pain. Her thighs, unrelenting around his neck, forced his chin up, and he could already feel his breath beginning to shallow. This was not going to be pleasant to get out of.

“Kids,” he called out, wincing as her grip tightened and his shoulder was stretched _way_ past the point of comfort. “Do _not_ try this at home.”

Past the wall of sheer force and muscle trapping him, he thought he could just about see the Widow frown. “What—”

He planted his feet firmly on the ground, steeled himself, and _wrenched_ away.

It was a move that no sane person would've attempted. Trying to escape from a hold like that using sheer brute force? At best, you'd end up with a dislocated shoulders; at worst, torn ligaments, maybe even bones if you were really unlucky. Fortunately, though, Deadpool was pretty much the exemplar of insanity, with an overpowered healing factor to boot, so he just threw his all into it and braced for pain. Pain that didn't end up coming, because just as he reached the point of no return, the Widow released her hold on him faster than you can say _what?_

**What?**

**_Whaaaat._ **

“My lucky day,” Deadpool wheezed, and used his two arms — one just newly-liberated and, though sore, far more functional than he'd thought it'd be — to prise the Widow's legs apart. Then he leapt up, spun around, and backfisted her in the back of one knee.

**_Ooh! Nasty move!_ **

“Sorry,” Deadpool said fervently as she gasped and groaned in pain, collapsing onto a nearby bench and clutching at it for support. “I just can't have you do-gooders running after me and chasing me out of the city, though, I really do have some urgent business to take care of.” He hit her again across the other knee. The sound she made was _hideous._ “No hard feelings though, right?”

“I swear to god,” she hissed, pulling herself upright and glaring at him through her fringe, now plastered to her forehead by sweat. “If you leave now.”

“Ooh.” He pointed at her approvingly as he walked back and away. “I like your fire. You've got some real drive, we don't see that much these days! Give the Cap my best, all right?”

Dopinder glanced up at him in surprise when he ambled back out to the lobby. “Oh, Mister Pool! Are you leaving already? I thought Miss Romanoff said—”

“Sorry, Dopinder buddy, but a man's gotta do what he's gotta do.” Deadpool shot Dopinder finger guns, which the receptionist fumblingly returned. “Have a good one, all right?”

“You too, Mister Pool!” Dopinder replied, with his usual dopey grin, and then Deadpool, whistling, headed back out onto the street. He ducked between a pair of dumpsters — ugh, rotting food smell, _disgusting_ — where he waited and kept watch just long enough to see the Cap’s blue-and-white figure dash past him. Then he re-emerged onto the sidewalk and made his merry way toward the subway.

“Look at that,” he announced, “we're home-free! All's ended well.”

**Yeah, sure, except for how that lead turned out to be a total bust. Kind of like I was saying right from the start, remember?**

“Oh, don't be such a _spoilsport!_ ”

Deadpool  stopped dead in the middle of the stairs and considered for a moment, ignoring the glares from other New Yorkers glaring at him as they scurried up and down past him. Actually, fuck, White had a point. _Fuck._

**Told you.** White sounded unbearably smug. God, how _annoying_.

“Well.” He started up again, ambling down the steps and hopping over a turnstile. “That lead was always going to be a bust anyway. And hey, at least the Avengers didn’t manage to get their hands on us, right?”

**Barely. Why didn’t you just shoot Black Widow as soon as you saw her?**

Deadpool gasped in mock horror. “Put a hole through that lean, toned body? Sacrilege!”

**_Oooh, she’d be cute with holes in her. Like Swiss cheese._ **

“God, Yellow, what is with your taste in women,” Deadpool complained, and then they were off and away to find their next lead in their hunt for Francis.

 

* * *

 

* * *

 

New York City looked lovely at night. Well, if you could get yourself high enough to get a decent view of the skyline. Luckily, Deadpool had no qualms about trespassing on private property, and no queasiness around heights, so he never had any difficulties finding an unoccupied rooftop to hang out at night and watch the city lights.

Which was, as a matter of fact, what he was doing right now.

“Ahh, New York City.” He twirled his knives in his hands and peered down at the streets below, where the lights of the cars were practically at a standstill. “Gotta love that gridlock.”

**The downsides of living in an urban core.**

**_Booooring! What’re we just sitting around for? Let’s go out and do something_ ** **fun!** **_Like, oooh, shooting up a building, let’s go into that building over there and shoot it up, up, up, yeah, shoot it up—_ **

Deadpool grabbed his spinning knife and pointed it firmly, pointy end first, up into the air. “Hey! Hey, don’t you dare mess with Taylor’s lyrics like that! Her music is too pure to be turned into a parody by an— an irreverent hater like _you_.”

**Oh, come on.** White’s eyeroll could not have been more obvious if it had been there, right in front of Deadpool, for all the world to see. **That’s what you’re getting worked up over? Taylor Swift? Your priorities are skewed.**

“Excuse you, I think my priorities are just fine.”

**Taylor Swift?** White sounded dubious. **Let’s see, what else do you hold to a ridiculously high standard... Taylor Swift, the latest pop hits, chimichangas—**

**_Ooooh, chimichangas! I like those. Can we have some now?_ **

**No, we cannot, because those are—**

“Hmm.” Deadpool looked down at his stomach and patted it, considering.

**Hold on. Wait. Don’t you dare—**

“Yellow’s got a point. Plus I haven’t eaten in a while.”

**I** **_said_ ** **, don’t you—**

Deadpool leapt to his feet, and then whoops, went nearly teetering off the edge of the building. He windmilled his arms frantically to regain his balance, and the moment he was no longer on the edge (of glory, haha, Lady Gaga, classic) of falling off the roof, he struck a pose. “Taco time, let’s go!”

**_Let’s go!_ **

**Fucking Christ.** White’s sigh echoed loudly through Deadpool’s ears as he made his creaking way down the rusted fire escape. **You two are such morons.**

“Don’t call me that, you’ll hurt my feelings,” Deadpool crooned.

Now. Where to for his tacos? If his watch was still correct — he checked it briefly; the glass face was cracked but the second hand kept ticking — it was currently 2 A.M., which was far beyond when any normal food truck would be open. There were, however, a few nearby late-opening restaurants that Deadpool knew of, and only one with both acceptable tacos and ridiculously late hours. Off to there it was, then.

He fully expected the restaurant to be deserted when he got there, but to his surprise, there was one other customer sitting at one of the shitty wobbly tables. To his even greater surprise, it was someone he recognized:

“Spidey?”

On the other side of the glass, Spidey's head bobbed lightly up and down. Like he was listening to music, maybe?

Deadpool tapped in the glass and leaned in closer. “Spidey? Spideeeey. Spidey!”

Spidey’s head bobbed lower, and lower, and lower... And then suddenly bolted upright again, sending Deadpool stumbling back and fumbling for his guns. It was a vain fumble, though. Spidey’s head just went back to wobbling, and then began once again bobbing, bobbing, bobbing, lower and lower and lower...

Deadpool blinked. Was Spidey falling asleep?

**Get in there and find out!**

Deadpool went.

The smell of frying meat instantly hit him smack in the face, making his stomach gurgle and demand to be served some glorious golden tacos, ASAP, but for once Deadpool pushed it aside, instead slowly approaching the table where Spidey was _definitely_ nodding off, in spite of the half-finished burrito bowl spread out in front of him. He was even still holding his fork, for god’s sake.

“Ooh.” Deadpool tsked softly. “You are not looking in good shape, baby boy.”

First he prised the fork out of Spidey’s limp grip. It was way too easy, like taking candy from a baby. Or taking candy from a corpse. A week-old, rotting corpse. Not one stuck in rigor mortis; that was a different metaphor altogether.

Then he plonked himself into the chair opposite Spidey’s, pulled the burrito bowl toward himself, and dug in. Mmm, mystery meat. Delish.

Once his stomach’s rumblings were finally — partially — appeased, and with the flavour of grease-meat- _yum_ thoroughly coating the inside of his mouth, Deadpool reached over, took firm hold of Spidey’s shoulder, and shook him awake.

Spidey came to with all limbs flailing, nearly knocking the burrito bowl onto the ground. Deadpool managed to save it in just the nick of time.

“Wakey wakey, baby boy,” he hummed out as he took another large bite of burrito bowl. “Didja have a late patrol tonight?”

Spidey blinked sleepily up at him. “W... Wuh?” He blinked again, and then tensed, planting his hands on the tabletop and leaning forward, suddenly alert. “Wade?”

“That’s my name, don’t overuse it!” He pushed around a piece of suspiciously dry-looking meat and added, “Though when I’m in uniform it’s really better for you to use my secret name, y’know. Deadpool, goes with the whole red-and-black spandex way better than _Wade_.”

Spidey’s fists clenched, then relaxed minutely. “Fine. Deadpool, then.”

Deadpool shot him a finger-gun. “You got it! So tell me, what’re you doing falling asleep in a tacqueria at—” He checked his watch. “--two-thirty in the morning? Aren’t you usually, I dunno, swinging around, making sure drunk clubbers get home safe, rape-free, and all that?”

“Drunk clubbers? I don’t...” Spidey shook his head, then sighed, slouching over in his seat. He gave a sort of little dry half-laugh. “God. I’d forgotten how exhausting it is to deal with you all the time.”

“Aww, you know you love it.”

Spidey sighed. “Look, W— Deadpool. Look, Deadpool. You’re not — You can’t. You can’t keep doing this. All right?”

He scoffed and scarfed down another forkful of burrito bowl. “Actually,” he said around a mouthful of questionable protein and beans, “I think I can. In fact.” He pointed his stolen fork at himself. “Kinda am, right now.”

Spidey buried his head in his arms. “Can you at least tell me where you’re staying?” he asked, muffled against the table.

“So you and the Avengers can hunt me down and kick me out of the city? Hmm.” He paused, pretended to think about it. “Yeah, how about no.” And shoved another laden forkful into his mouth.

“We’re not... We’re not looking for you to...” Spidey let out a long, drawn-out groan, and dragged his hands all the way back over his head. Deadpool continued to merrily work his way through the remainder of the burrito bowl.

Finally Spidey straightened again, resigned. “You know, Natasha told me she saw you today.”

Deadpool paused, and then continued on eating.

“Said you came by looking for Francis again. Why are you looking for Francis?”

Deadpool took another bite of burrito bowl. Chewed. Stared Spider-Man dead in the eye. Swallowed.

Spider-Man sighed.

“I just don’t know what I need to do to make you realize — this is all wrong. No, no. It’s just... You’re not... You can’t...”

He really seemed to be struggling over there. Poor guy. So Deadpool decided to give him a hand.

“All right, Spidey, listen up.” Spider-Man blinked in surprise as Deadpool shoveled all the rest of the burrito bowl into his mouth and swallowed with barely any chewing. “I know you and Iron Asshole and all his groupies think that you’re the _ultimate defenders_ of this city, okay, and that you’re just trying to protect it from big bad Deadpool’s influence. But you know what? Just because you’re the big-name superheroes here doesn’t mean you run this city. Sure, you’re the defenders of it, _ooh,_ big deal. But you’ve got no right, and I mean _no right_ , to toss me out just because you don’t approve of my _methods_.”

“We’re not—”

“Nuh!” Deadpool raised a stern finger. Spidey fell silent. “I know that you know all about what Francis did to me, heck, even the X-morons know about it, and I think you’ll probably agree with me when I say that my anger at him is _very well-founded_ , so kindly just back the fuck off and let me do what I want to with him, capisce? There’s nothing you can say or do that’ll stop me from killing him once I’ve found him—”

“You can’t _kill Francis!_ ”

Deadpool tutted and shook his finger at Spidey. “See, what was I just saying? Just because you don’t approve of my unaliving business doesn’t mean you can stomp all over it willy-nilly, however you please. You disapprove? You set all the other Avengers and half-bit heroes of the city to hunting me down so you can toss me out? Go ahead, but I’m not leaving until I find Francis and kill him _dead_. In fact I should do it to Weasel too for selling me out,” he muttered as he took another massive bite. “Serve that two-timing ratface right. And here I thought we were friends.”

“You can’t—” Spidey was absolutely _exploding_. “You can’t kill— That’s not— Who do you think you are? You can’t just—”

“Can’t what, baby boy?” Deadpool leaned back in his chair and winked. “Can’t keep rocking my smokin’-hot bod? Oh wait, sorry, no, _you’re_ the smoking hot one here. Got a bit mixed up, it’s all good now, carry on.”

“You can’t just— just keep running around the city like you’re doing!” Spidey slammed his hands down on the table. Deadpool didn’t even blink. “Come back with me. Mr Stark thinks— he said that he can help you, but you need to be there for it. I don’t want to force you, but— Please. Just, stop all this _madness_ and come back already.”

Deadpool pretended to think it over. “That thing you were saying earlier. ‘Mr Stark thinks.’ Did you, by any chance, mean to end that with, ‘where Francis is’?”

Spidey’s reply was instant. “No.”

“Mmm. Well, then.... It was a tough sell, Spidey, but I’m gonna have to say—”

He bolted upright and dashed out the door. “ _Sayonara, sucker!_ ”

“Wade!” he heard Spidey holler from behind him, and then, just before the door swung shut and blocked out the noise from inside the restaurant: “ _Deadpool!_ ”

Deadpool was already halfway down the street and turning a corner. Even web-slinging Spider-Man would be hard-pressed to find him at that point.

**Who did he think he was?** White’s familiar voice scoffed into Deadpool’s ears. **Trying to order us out of the city as if it’s turf? Good luck to the Avengers on kicking us out. What an annoying, do-gooding bunch.**

**_SO annoying! Let’s shoot them if they ever come after us. Shoot them, carve them up, give them a real taste of what it’s like to try to come after Deadpool—_ **

“Fuck yeah!” Deadpool burst out laughing, and it kept going as he ran down the dimly-lit streets, all the way across New York City.

 

* * *

 

“Right.” Deadpool rubbed his palms together, cackling like a bad supervillain right before their penultimate monologue. “Now, now, now. Where to next?”

**Depends.** White sounded completely fed up with Deadpool’s shit. **Have you finally got another lead?**

“Not at all.” Deadpool peered at the crayon-scribbled drawings lain around his feet: lists of places to search, lists of places he’d already searched. Every single item overlapped. “But then, where would be the fun in that?”

**_All the fun._ ** Yellow sounded grouchy, like an overly-tired toddler waiting for their afternoon nap. **_Waiting around like this’s no fun. Can’t we go and do something FUN._ **

“Ooh!” Deadpool snapped his fingers up at the ceiling. “Good idea, Yellow! Let’s go out and have some fun!”

**_Really?_ ** Yellow sounded cautious. **_Like ripping limbs off people’s bodies kind of fun?_ **

“Nahhhh, that’s way too messy, plus Spidey would get all upset at me. ‘Don’t kill people, Deadpool!’ ‘Unaliving people is bad, Deadpool!’ Spoilsport.” Deadpool shook his head rapidly to clear it. “What was I saying? Right, I was saying. We should go out and do something fun! Instead of just hanging out in this dump all day.”

**You** **_chose_ ** **this dump.**

“So you know how right I am when I say that it’s a dump. Come on! Out we go!”

Deadpool lead the grumbling voices down the stairs and out into the brightly-lit street.

“Today is a day for fun!” he shouted at the pedestrians, who glared at him and scurried away, as if afraid he might start shooting at them if they didn’t clear away quickly enough. Which, okay, _totally_ sounded like something he might do, but that wasn’t the point. “Fun!” he shouted down at a baby in a stroller, who promptly began crying. “Jeez, doesn’t anyone understand the word ‘fun’? It’s a day!” he shouted at the sky. “For! Fun!”

**Okay, jeez, we get it already, can you just please stop shouting now?**

“If I didn’t know better, White,” Deadpool said as he strolled along the street, grinning and winking at every person who took a sharp turn to avoid him, “I’d say you were hungover. Except I know you’re not, because you’re just a voice, and voices don’t get hungover.”

**I’ll hang** **_you_ ** **over if you don’t stop talking** **_right now._ **

“Ooooh, yup, sounds like you’re _definitely_ hungover.” He waved at a teen who didn’t look up from their phone long enough to acknowledge him, and turned a corner to avoid the streetlights — and then abruptly backpedaled. He peered into the window of the store he’d just passed.

**_Whazzat?_ ** Yellow was pressed up all over him, so close that his skin was crawling. **_Didja see something?_ **

“Nooo,” Deadpool said slowly, eyes glued to one of the many TV screens lined up in the electronics shop’s display, and then: “Yeeeeees.”

**_Whozzat?_ **

“That, right there...” He pressed his finger to the window pane, right over the face of the smug bastard on the screen. “Is our next target.”

**Hold on.** Now White was all up against him too, ugh, _disgusting_ , didn’t they know the meaning of personal space? **That’s not Francis.**

“Francis?” Deadpool scoffed and let his hand drop away. “Who cares about Francis?”

**You care about Francis.** White sounded agitated. **_We_ ** **care about Francis. We’ve been after him since he turned our face to ground beef, how can you not care about Francis?**

“Francis, schmancis, I’m sure the local butcher will find him and chop him up for us. No, we’re not going after Francis.” He grinned and cracked his knuckles, rocking his head side to side to listen to his neck crack. “We’re going goblin hunting.”

 

* * *

 

“The first step to goblin-hunting,” Deadpool said as he rang the doorbell and waited for an answer, “is to gather a party. Not like a college, frat-boy, red-solo-cup party, but like a Han Solo and Leia and Luke Incestwalker party. Like an Elijah Wood in a wig and Draco Malfoy reborn as an elf kinda party. Like an Ian McKellen in rags and a baker’s dozen of dwarves kind of party. Tolkien, the master, the man! May your valiant contributions to this world never be forgotten.”

**Oh, god** , White moaned in the back of Deadpool’s mind. **Someone shut him up now, please.**

“I’m talking Dany, the rightful Queen of the Iron Throne, and her three dragon babies kind of party! I’m talking—”

**_Try the doorbell again,_ ** Yellow suggested as White’s moaning intensified. **_Maybe they didn’t hear the first time?_ **

Deadpool pressed the button down again, and held it this time, voice slowly rising over the incessant buzzing in the background. “I’m talking the Dread Pirate Liar and his two turncoats kinda part! I’m talking the symbolic lion, the symbolic ginger lion, and the symbolic she-should’ve-actually-been-an-eagle-not-a-lion kinda party! I’m talking—”

The door flew open. Deadpool, finger still on the buzzer, turned to face the mohawked girl who’d opened it.

“Ugh.” She grimaced and popped her gum. “What're _you_ doing back here.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” he mocked back at her, propping out a hip and flourishing extravagantly with the hand that wasn’t still pressed firmly against the doorbell. The still-buzzing doorbell. “ _What’re you doing back here._ Well, Miss Look At Me I’m So Goth And Emo—”

She crossed her arms and leaned against the doorjamb, still glaring at him. “Get your finger off my doorbell.”

He crossed one arm over his chest. The other, he kept on the doorbell. “Or what?”

“Or I’ll cut it off.”

“Oh, wow, so _scary_ ,” he began, only to be cut off by a fluorescent head of hair that popped up over the mohawked girl’s shoulder and beamed at him.

“Hi, Wade!”

He beamed back at her. “Omigod! Hi, Yukio!”

She waved madly at him. He waved madly back.

“Can you let go of the doorbell? It’s very loud.”

He released it instantly, and ignored the mohawked girl’s rolled eyes and intelligible muttering.

“It’s been such a long time, Wade!” Yukio beamed at him and rested her chin on the mohawked girl’s shoulder, who merely grunted a little instead of swatting her off. Dawww, so adorable. “How have you been? You never come around anymore.”

“Ahhhhhhhh.” Deadpool waved off her comment. “You know how it is, the merc life gets in the way and suddenly you’re months behind on all your social obligations. I see the L-word life has been treating you well, though. Good for you, bringing some light to Negasonic Teenage Gloom’s life!”

Negasonic rolled her eyes. Yukio giggled and wrapped her arms around Negasonic’s shoulders. _Dawwwwww._

“Ellie and I have been very happy together. But why are you here today? Is anything wrong?”

“His personality is wrong,” Negasonic muttered.

“ _His personality is wrong_ ,” Deadpool mimicked.

“ _Both_ your personalities are wrong,” Yukio said, unperturbed. “You don’t look so well though, Wade. Should I call Piotr? I think I’ll call Piotr. Come in while you wait! Ellie, can you bring him some cookies?”

“Please _don’t_ come in,” Negasonic sighed as Yukio skipped away, but she stepped aside all the same to let Deadpool inside. Such a pretty little house it was, too, with a pretty row of flowers out front and pretty white wooden-slat walls and pretty little curtains for all the windows — Negasonic stood out in it all like a coffee stain on a fine lace tablecloth. As long as Yukio approved, he supposed.

Deadpool perched himself on the edge of her pretty little couch with its pretty little cushions and a pretty little oversized doily draped over its back. Yukio returned a few minutes later with a plate of swiss jam cookies, which she set before Deadpool atop a half-finished crossword. She picked up one of the half-finished coffee mugs and sipped from it, just as Negasonic swept in, tweaked one of the cushions on the couch, and then squeezed in beside Yukio on the loveseat.

“Piotr is on his way, he says he’ll be here in twenty minutes.” Yukio wrapped both her hands around her surely-cold mug and tilted her head at Deadpool, eyes wide and guileless. “So! It’s been a while since you’ve visited, Wade. How have you been? What brings you here today?”

Deadpool clapped his hands together and beamed. “ _So_ glad you asked! Tell me, Yukio, you beautiful, beautiful girl. Would you like to help me go goblin-hunting?”

“Goblin-hunting?” Yukio repeated, eyes dancing. “Where, in Tamriel?”

Deadpool guffawed. “ _Love_ that reference, but no, I’m not talking Skyrim here. I’m talking about a real-life goblin. So? Whaddya say?”

“Ohhhh.” Yukio had finally stopped laughing, but not smiling. She gave Deadpool a wide, bright grin. “You’re LARPing now? That’s fun! I was wondering what all your toys and your costume were for.”

Deadpool pressed a hand to his chest in mock offense. “ _Toys?_ You call my weapons _toys?_ I’ll have you know they’re some of the deadliest weapons that money can buy!”

“Very deadly, I’m sure,” Yukio said solemnly. Beside her, Negasonic rolled her eyes.

**If she doesn’t believe you, you could give her a demonstration. Try them out on her, see how they perform.**

**_Turn your katanas into skewers! Ooooh that’d be fun_ **.

Deadpool shook the voices off — _so_ not appropriate — and turned back to the matter at hand. “But anyway, weapons aside — so? Whaddya think? Wanna help me hunt down Osborn?”

“Osborn?” Negasonic cut in, face scrunched up in disapproval. “What, like Norman Osborn from Oscorp Industries?”

He snapped his fingers at her. “Yup, exactly! You know, for a gloomy angsty teen stereotype, you’re pretty clever.”

She made a face at him, which he all too readily returned. By the time he turned back to Yukio, her smile had been replaced by a slight, thoughtful frown.

“Norman Osborn...” she said slowly. “Norman Osborn is your goblin?”

“Well.” He shrugged. “Not _my_ goblin exactly, more like Spider-Man’s goblin, but, well, you know what they say — the enemy of my friend is my enemy, or something along those lines. Right? And I figure, even if Spidey doesn’t like to call us friends, I consider him practically my bestie, so. Yeah, I’m gonna hunt Osborn down and un-alive him. You in or what?”

“Hmm.” Yukio’s brow furrowed slightly — not the reaction he’d been expecting. Where was all the excitement from earlier?

**Something’s not right.**

“Shush,” Deadpool hissed aside at White, before quickly turning back to Yukio, who was frowning harder than ever.

Finally, she said, “It’s very nice of you to hunt down this goblin for your friend. Who is this Spider-Man, though? I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned him before. Is he a new friend of yours?”

Deadpool stared at him. She stared back, eyes wide and head tilted ever-so-slightly to the side.

“Who’s Spidey?” he repeated, incredulously, and then louder, “ _Who’s Spidey?_ You’ve got to be kidding me. Spider-Man? Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man? The webslinger keeping New York City streets safe from petty crime? My fellow red spandex buddy? You’ve got to know who he is.”

**She’s not the type to play dumb. Face it, something’s fishy about this whole thing.**

Yukio’s frown still hadn’t faded, and when Deadpool glanced over at Negasonic, he found her glaring at him with a heat he honestly felt was completely unwarranted.

**_Like she wants to go all warhead on you! Ooooh you think she’s thinking of it? I bet she’s thinking of it._ **

**And why would she be thinking of attacking you unless there was something else going on? She may be a moody teen but she’s not dickish enough to attack you without reason. Now, what do you think that reason could be?**

Deadpool was about to snap at both the voices to _shut up_ with their conspiracy theories already, when Yukio spoke again.

“I see. I just wonder, though — is Peter also doing this... goblin-hunt with you? Surely he must be, right?”

**Peter?**

**_Peter?_ **

“Peter?” Deadpool repeated, utterly befuddled. “Who’s Peter?”

Yukio’s frown was practically carved into her face by that point, and when Deadpool glanced over at Negasonic, he could see dull orange heat simmering in those dark, dark eyes.

Was it just his imagination, or were those sparks flashing at Yukio’s fingertips?

Her voice was mild as she spoke again. “You know Peter, don’t you? Didn’t you move in with him two years ago? I thought things have been going well with you recently.”

“Nope,” Deadpool replied, and yes, those were definitely sparks at her fingertips. Bright blue sparks, dancing all around her hands. “No sirree, not a clue, don’t know any Peter, Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, doesn’t ring a bell.”

Yukio’s gaze remained steady on his as she reached out — with those blue, sparking fingers — and gently squeezed Negasonic’s arm. “Ellie, can you go call Piotr and make sure he’s on his way? I’m sure he’ll want to be here to hear about Wade’s goblin-hunt and to offer his help.”

**What’s she doing? Why does she want to call Piotr now? Deadpool, wake up!** **_They’re conspiring against you._ **

Negasonic stared at her. Stared back at Deadpool.

“I’ll be right back,” she muttered, and clomped out of the room, sending Deadpool one final deadly glare on her way out.

Deadpool and Yukio kept staring at each other in silence for a while. There was someone bright in her eyes, something electric, something—

“I forgot to ask earlier, but how have you been, Wade?” She smiled at him, sunnily, cheerily—

**Fake.**

“It’s been such a long time. Where have you been staying recently?”

**Why does she want to know? I bet it’s for the same reason you wanted to know where Francis was. She’s** **_hunting you_ ** **, can’t you see?** **_Stop her before it’s too late._ **

And, well, White kind of had a point.

It only took two steps for Deadpool to leap over the coffee table, sending mugs and books crashing to the floor. Only a moment for him to seize Yukio by the throat—

**_Break her neck! Like a chicken, bawk bawk bawk!_ **

—and lean in close, until they were nearly nose-to-nose, until all he could see were those wide, wide, blue-speckled eyes.

“Who’re you working with?” he hissed at her, and squeezed her throat just tight enough to make her gasp. Not tight enough to cut off her air, but enough so she would get the message: _Don’t try anything funny._ “Who’s after me? Is it Osborn? Are you in cahoots with Osborn? Or is it the Avengers, I bet it’s the Avengers, I bet you X-shits have agreed to help them run me out of the city for once and for all. Is that it? Is that why—”

**I told you, I** **_told you_ ** **right from the start. She’s been acting suspicious all this time. Find out what she’s up to, even if you have to** **_choke_ ** **it out of her—**

**_CHOKE HER SNAP HER NECK IN TWO_ **

Her mouth opened and closed a few times. She gripped at his wrist with both hands, not trying to fight him off, just squeezing, applying pressure that he couldn’t ignore, and then—

Something hit him in the side of the head, and the world exploded into pain.

He went stumbling to the side, falling to the ground, and somewhere along the way he must’ve released Yukio because next thing he knew he was curled up on the fluffy, carpeted floor, clutching at his head with both hands because fucking _hell_ that hurt even if he knew it would all go away in a few minutes once his healing factor finally kicked in.

His vision was blurred, whether from tears or from impermanent brain damage he had no idea, but he could just make out Negasonic’s fuzzy black form — surrounded by a dimming orange glow, _fuck_ , he was going to get her back for that next time — bent over Yukio, still slumped over on the couch.

**What are you doing? Get up! Get up before they get another shot at you!**

**_How DARE THEY hit us how DARE THEY let’s RIP THEM UP AND TEAR THEM TO PIECES MAKE THEM PAY FOR ATTACKING US_ **

“Are you okay?” he could faintly hear Negasonic ask, but if Yukio replied, it was too softly for him to hear.

**Don’t just sit there like an idiot. They’re not watching you, you can get them back. You have your guns with you, your swords, your knives, take your pick, just get them before they can get you again—**

**_Let’s tear their HEADS FROM THEIR SHOULDERS and pull apart their KNEES and pull all their toes off ONE BY ONE_ **

He stumbled to his feet, one hand pressed hard against his head. It was like a nuclear bomb site in their, with the voices slowly and steadily getting louder and louder, and on top of that the most painful high, whining sound like nails on chalkboard played on the highest string of an out-of-tune violin — all the noises piling up and on top of each other until only the shadow of thought remained. He didn’t care anymore about what the X-Men had been up to; he didn’t care who they were working with, who was hunting him, why they’d attacked him. He just wanted _out_.

He was barely aware of stumbling out of the house. By the time he came back to himself, he could hear Yukio calling after him with a hoarse voice, and he sped up, even though he couldn’t hear any footsteps.

**What are you doing? Get back in there! You want to give them the chance to come after you again? I don’t care how buddy-buddy you and Bimbo used to be, get back in there and** **_end her_ ** **, or I’ll do it for you and I won’t be nearly as merciful about it.**

**_GO BACK! GO BACK GO BACK GO BACK AND KILL THEM DICE THEM THEY HIT YOU SO YOU BLEED THEM_ **

He walked faster. And faster. And faster, until he was running at full throttle away from that pretty little house with its pretty little windows and its pretty little tenants who’d tried to kill him and who were going to get away with it — he was going to _let them_ get away with it — until he was far, far away with the voices still screeching in his head.

 

* * *

 

By the time he was sitting hunched over in the middle of the subway station, the voices had finally — barely — calmed down.

**It was a dumb move not to finish them off right there. What’re you going to do next time they try to take you down?**

**_Awwwww, I wanted to see them bleed. And their pretty skin all cut up. I bet we coulda made jigsaw puzzles from it, it woulda been fun._ **

“I’ll just deal with it next time if it happens again,” Deadpool snapped at White. God, his head hurt from all their _shouting_. “Can we move on? I asked them for help taking down the goblin; they said no, fine, whatever. I’ll just take him on myself then.”

**You really think that’ll turn out well?** White sneered.

“I think it’ll turn out perfectly fine, fuck you very much.”

**_Buuuuuuuurn._ **

**Well.** White was still grumpy, but at least he’d quieted down some. **I suppose I couldn’t stop you from going even if I wanted to. Fine, go find the Green Goblin. Fight him. Whatever happens, it’ll be your problem.**

“Fine,” Deadpool snarked back, “I _will_ ,” and got on the train toward Oscorp Tower.

It was a long ride to 57th street, spent mostly in a stony silence. By the time the door dinged open at their stop, someone the three of them had entered a heated debate about the best of Tex-Mex.

“It’s chimichangas,” Deadpool said loudly as he stepped off the train and headed to the stairs. “Chimichangas all the way.

**You’ve got no taste. Did you lose your taste buds to the healing factor, along with your looks and any hope that anyone would ever look at your naked face without puking all over it? Not that that would make the view much worse.**

**_Ooooh! Buuuuuurn! Take some ice for that!_ **

“Okay, first, _rude_ ,” Deadpool said to them both. “Second, we were talking about _chimichangas,_ not my face, which may not look so great these days—”

**Understatement.**

**_Soooooo understatement!_ **

**I’d say it’s disgusting.**

**_Disgusting!_ **

**Repellent.**

**_Yucky!_ **

**Abhorrent.**

**_Icky!_ **

**Repulsive.**

**_Grooooooss._ **

**Revolt—**

“ _Okay_ , I get the point,” Deadpool snapped at them, a bit more sharply than usual, but fuck that, they deserved it, his head was still pounding, and besides, he knew his face looked like a skunk fart given form and rubbed all over with raccoon shit but they knew that he knew so was it really necessary for them to keep _rubbing it in like that?_

**Oscorp Tower’s the other way, idiot.**

**_Dumbass!_ **

**Can’t believe you almost fucked that up too.**

Fucking jeebus the voices were in a snit today. Still, Deadpool made an about-turn and started up 8th — and yup, there it was on the other side of the street, rising out of the ground like a fugly amputated green gobliny dick. Now, there was someone who was definitely compensating for something.

**Like you?**

“Shut up, White.”

Deadpool got a few minutes of blessed silence as he stumbled his way up to Oscorp Tower, until—

**_Hey, isn’t that the rat?_ **

“The what?”

**_The weasel!_ **

**No way that’s actually him at the front desk.**

Deadpool peered closer at the windows across the street, but nope, everything was still as fuzzy as a donkey’s rear end. So he sallied across — waving a dismissive hand at all the motorists who swerved and honked at him as he went — until he could press his face right up against the glass, and yup, there was Weasel in the flesh, bent low over one of the slick glass countertops and chatting up the _fine_ redhead behind it.

What the fuck was Weasel doing in _Norman Oscorp’s_ tower now? First it was Francis, now the Goblin? The fuck was going on?

As Deadpool watched, Weasel pulled out a folded page from his beat-up messenger bag, scribbled something onto the back of it, and handed it to the receptionist. Maybe he was just chatting the girl up? But no, the receptionist was all polite, friendly smiles, neither sultry and flirting back nor stiff and fending him off. And when Weasel turned just so, Deadpool could catch a glimpse of his face, and there was none of the usual sliminess that came with him trying to pick a chick up. He looked — dare Deadpool think it? — _serious_.

**_Rat! Rat! I told you he’s a rat!_ **

**Are you serious? Is he serious?**

“No way,” Deadpool said automatically, because Fucking Francis aside, he and Weasel were still _buddies_ , had still known each other for decades by this point, and Deadpool might be willing to overlook a little bit of backstabbing among friends, but this—

This was Norman Osborn. The Goblin. This was Spidey’s butt on the line. And Deadpool had never seen Weasel look so serious before, _ever_ , so what could it possibly be but...?

**Told you you couldn’t trust him.**

“You said that already, no one likes a know-it-all,” Deadpool snapped back automatically, and made his way over to the tower entrance.

He had just enough time to arrange himself all pretty-like beside the door before Weasel finally pushed his way out the door.

“Hey, Weasel. Miss me?”

Weasel glanced over at him absently, almost on reflex. Then spent a few long seconds just _blinking_ at him. After a criminally long pause, Deadpool twiddled his fingers at him, and he finally seemed to snap back to himself.

“ _Wade?_ ”

“It’s ‘Deadpool’ now,” he sang, pushing himself upright and loping his way over to Weasel’s side. The poor rat was frozen stiff as a taxidermied corpse, so Deadpool took him by the elbow and led him gently down the street. As they made their way toward a narrow alleyway Deadpool had spotted earlier, he rambled, “You know, after the whole secret government program wrecking my face in the name of evil murdery science? Yeah, that, right, you remember that. But anyway, that is _so_ not my point, my point is, I came here to get into Oscorp Tower and hunt down the green goblin and go all, _pew pew, you’re dead now_ on his ass, and then lo and behold! Who do I see in the lobby? My good old friend Weasel! My good old friend Weasel who would _never_ be a snitch, right? Who’s just as good friends with me as I am with him? Of course I’m good friends with you, we’re best friends! Best buds! In fact, you’re one of my _only_ best buds, the other one being a certain web-slinger we both know and love, Spidey oh Spidey, he’s always getting himself into messes, isn’t he? Lucky for him he’s got Deadpool to help bail him out of those messes, so you know, when I saw _you_ in the lobby of the tower of the guy who wants to _kill_ Spidey—”

Abruptly he jerked Weasel into the alley. Weasel went, sputtering and stumbling, and before he could regain his footing, Deadpool slammed him up against the wall between two frankly _disgusting_ -smelling dumpsters.

“We’re good friends, aren’t we, Weasel?” Deadpool hissed, pressing Weasel into the wall with one arm pressed firmly across his chest. Weasel gasped and scrabbled at Deadpool’s arm; Deadpool just pressed harder. “And a friend of a friend is basically a friend, right? So go on, tell me that you weren’t in there to sell out Spidey to the goblin. You wouldn’t do that, now would you, Weasel?”

“Mary and Joseph’s hairy balls,” Weasel sputtered out. “I only came because I thought there was no way you’d actually show up. Which, by the way: what the fuck is the goblin? What happened to Francis?”

“Francis? Why would I be looking for that scum?” Oh, whoops — was that a classic diversionary tactic right there? Deadpool shifted his arm up a bit so it was just pressing on Weasel’s windpipe, and waited until he started to wheeze. Maybe then he’d actually answer Deadpool’s questions.

“I’ll ask you again, nicely.” He beamed at Weasel, and hoped it showed through his mask. “Did you come here to sell Spidey out to Osborn?”

“No! What? No! Who—? Why—? How—? Fuck your head is — fucked up — no I _wasn’t_ there — to sell out _anyone_ — looking for _you_ — get off me, jackass!”

**You’re not seriously buying that, are you? Have you finally got it through your thick skull that you** **_can’t trust_ ** **these people?**

**_Choke him choke him choke him choke him STRANGLE HIM get your fingers around that PUNY SCRUNTY NECK and RIP IT APART TEAR IT APART_ **

Deadpool thought about it. He and Weasel had known each other for a while. Stuck with each other through thick and thin, right side of the law and wrong, handsome face and fugly.

He let Weasel go.

Weasel promptly bent over double, grabbed his knees, and sucked in a massive breath.

“Fucking _christ_ , man.” He gagged and coughed and made an overly theatrical show of regaining his breath, straightening and puffing for air a few times. “God, did you have to drag us in here? It reeks. Almost more than you do — Jesus, when’s the last time you showered?”

“Excuse you, you don’t exactly smell like roses and daisies either,” Deadpool huffed as he waited for Weasel to finish the play-act already. Finally, after fucking forever, the rat pounded his chest a few more times, made a truly disgusting sound at the back of his throat, and then spat out a wad of mucus onto the ground.

Deadpool wrinkled his nose up and leaned away. “And you’re judging me for _my_ hygiene?”

“Shaddup,” Weasel sniffled, and wiped his nose with his sleeve. “It’s your own fault anyway, choking me like that, whaddya think was gonna happen?”

“My fault? Like _hell—_ ”

**_Liar liar! Set his pants on fire c’mon do it burn him burn him up till he’s just a neat pile of boooones_ **

“No one asked you, Yellow,” Deadpool snapped over his shoulder.

Weasel squinted at where Deadpool had turned to. “The fuck’s Yellow?”

“The voices, you know, my— Whatever. What were you doing in Oscorp’s tower?”

Weasel shrugged and shoved his hands deep into his pockets, slouching down into his sweater as usual. “Was walking back from lunch, spotted the redhead, though _damn that there’s a hot piece of ass—_ ”

In a flash, Deadpool had Weasel crowded back up against the wall and the muzzle of one gun planted firmly under Weasel’s chin. He felt the gun bob as Weasel swallowed hard, and he kept his gaze glued to Weasel’s face even as the rat slowly raised his hands in surrender.

“Don’t give me any bullshit,” he hissed, and narrowed his eyes. “How much did Oscorp offer you to sell out Spidey? You greedy little shit, I don’t care how much you’re gagging for cash but if you told him _anything_ —”

“You know,” Weasel drawled, and barely flinched when Deadpool shoved the gun against his chin hard enough to bruise, “I didn’t really believe Peter when he told me you’d started calling him Spidey, because seriously? That’s tacky, even for you, man.”

**_Peter? Peter! Is he talking about Spidey? Spidey’s Peter!_ **

**How does this** **_rat_ ** **know Spider-Man’s real identity when you don’t even know that?**

**_Beat it out of him! Beat it OUT OF HIM beat him UP and OUT and—_ **

“Shut up!” Deadpool shouted at the voices, but they only clamoured louder and louder. He pressed one hand hard against one ear, as if that would do anything to block out the voices ringing in his head.

“You okay there, buddy?”

“If you told the Green Goblin a _word_ about Spider-Man’s real identity,” Deadpool hissed, and pressed the gun to the center of Weasel’s forehead, because this shit clearly wasn’t getting it.

Sure enough, even with the metal against his skin and Deadpool inches from his face, Weasel was unfazed. “Can I just say, man, if you’re going to do this whole intimidation routine, can you at least do it with a knife? A real one? Maybe cut me up a bit? Not too much, though, and not on the face, chicks dig that. And let me record it too — or call in someone to record it. Or, better yet, call in the cops so they can watch it happen, give those dickwads what they want. Seriously, you’d be making my month, it’d make shit _so_ much easier not to have to keep going after your lardy ass all the time—”

**_Lardy ass? LARDY ASS?_ **

**Going after you? Who’s going after you? I bet it’s the goblin. I bet the goblin knows you’re the way to get to Spidey — fuck, Deadpool, can you get any** **_stupider?_ ** **You’re leading him** **_right to Spider-Man_ ** **—**

**_I’LL SHOW HIM A LARDY ASS LET’S SHOW HIM A LARDY ASS THE INSIDE OF HIS OWN LARDY ASS_ **

No matter how Deadpool shook his head, the voices kept roaring in his ears, drowning out almost all other sound and thought. _Focus_ . Weasel was still crammed against the wall in front of him, so Deadpool cocked the gun, and he knew sure as shit that Weasel knew what the sound meant, but the arrogant ass still wasn’t so much as blinking, what was with that, did he know something Deadpool didn’t, _why wasn’t he reacting—_

“I won’t let you hurt Spidey,” he hissed at Weasel. “You hear me? I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep him safe, and if I need to kill both you and Oscorp’s green goblin ass to do it then I will, you’re not touching a hair on his head—”

**_TAKE ALL THE HAIR ON HIS HEAD AND SHOVE IT UP HIS ASS_ **

"—not if I’ve got anything to say about it.”

**You think you can do shit? You can’t do** **_shit_ ** **. Barely escaped the X-rookies, barely found your way here, barely even found out about Weasel, what the fuck do you think you can do, huh?**

He had to find Spidey, he had to find Spidey and make sure Spidey stayed safe.

“Wade? Wade, man, talk to me.”

**_RIP OFF HIS SKIN AND SHRED IT INTO BITS_ **

“Aw, fuck, Peter’s totally gonna kill me. Wade? Wade, man, _talk_ to me.”

“I’m not doing _shit_ for you, you two-faced motherfucker,” Deadpool hissed.

“Okay, I don’t know what’s going on in that head of yours, but I’m not a, a _traitor_. I’m not planning on hurting Peter, or, or Spider-Boy, or whatever you’re calling him now — so listen, man. Come with me for a sec.”

Deadpool shoved away from him. Fuck Weasel, who cared about Weasel, Weasel would get taken care of one way or another; he needed to find Spidey, protect Spidey, make sure Spidey stayed safe.

“Hey!”

Weasel’s hand closed around Deadpool’s wrist. It only took Deadpool a few seconds to break his grip, but in the meantime, Weasel’s motormouth managed to spout out:

“Okay listen man you can trust me we’ve known each other forever right? You know you can trust me, you just gotta come with me just _trust me_ and come with me okay this is the best way for you to protect Peter or Spidey or whatever okay he’s safe nothing’s gonna happen to him—”

**Let Weasel protect Spider-Man for you, Deadpool, go and do it, since hell knows you can’t manage it yourself, you useless sack of crap.**

“I don’t need your shitty _help_ ,” Deadpool shouted at Weasel, and twisted his arm hard enough that the rat squealed out and went crashing to the ground. When he tried to pick himself back up Deadpool picked him up and threw him back into the alley, where his lanky limbs crashed against the dumpsters and brought them tumbling over with a rattle and a bang and a sudden flood of mouldy stink.

**_PICK HIM BACK UP THROW HIM CRUSH HIM BREAK HIS BACK INTO A MILLION PIECES_ **

Deadpool turned and walked away.

He could hear Weasel still calling after him, still stuck in that pile of trash in that ass-crack of an alley. “Like hell you don’t need my help! You _need_ help, man, you’re not okay!”

Deadpool kept walking. Spidey; he needed to find Spidey, tell him that Weasel had told the Green Goblin all about him. He needed to tell Spidey he wasn’t safe.

He needed to protect Spidey.

**Still so sure that you can? You’re funny. Let me know when the delusions finally wear off.**

Deadpool didn’t tell White to shut up this time. What was the point? He knew it wouldn’t work.

 

* * *

 

**You can’t stay in the city anymore. You know that, right?**

“Shut up,” Deadpool muttered. He walked down the street with his head down, his arms wrapped tightly around himself, as if he could somehow block out White’s snide commentary if he just _tried hard enough_ , but crimson and amber lights kept flashing at the edges of his vision, the grey pavement under his feet kept coming, there was a dull pounding throb at the back of his head that just wouldn’t go away, and White’s voice kept going, and going, and going.

**If even** **_Weasel_ ** **has decided to turn tail and sell you out to the highest bidder, it’s only a matter of time till someone with a grudge hunts you down, and do you really want to get tortured and killed again?**

“I _know_ that.”

**_Why should you let them torture and kill you? Do it to them before they do it to you! The best offense is a vicious, bloody, merciless offense! Didja stock up on ammo? Huh, huh? Didja? Things are gonna get reeeeeal bloody here._ **

“I can’t just kill them! Do you think the Avengers would ever let me back in New York again after that?”

**That’s not a problem. Just kill the Avengers too.**

**_Yeah! Dumb Avengers. They should die anyway, who do they think they are, ruling over the city like they’re the kings of the place? Huh? Why can’t_ ** **we** **_be kings instead? I wanna be a king._ **

**Shut up, Yellow.**

**_Awwww..._ **

“I told you, I can’t kill them! They’d never let me in the city again.” Deadpool dragged his feet along the ground as he walked, and listened to each _scrape-scrape_ of his shoes scuffing against the pavement. “I wouldn’t get to see Spidey again.”

**At this rate you’re not gonna see him again anyway. Either someone else is going to get to you first—**

**_Ooh, or they’ll get to_ ** **Spidey** **_first. Mm, roast spidey._ **

“Hey! Spidey’s off-limits!”

**_All crunch and crackly, like spider popcorn—_ **

“Spidey is _off-limits!_ ”

**Yeah, yeah, we know. Yellow’s just being an idiot again, like always. Aren’t you?**

**_I’m not an idiot!_ **

**Suuure. Anyway, Spidey may normally be able to take care of himself, but do you** **_really_ ** **think he can hold out against the kind of people that come after you? Against the type of people** **_Francis_ ** **has under his thumb? There’s super-strength, and then there’s** **_super_ ** **strength, and Spidey’s just does not trump the other.**

Deadpool tripped off the curb. His vision went fuzzy white, like a blizzard in Maine, then spotted black, then back to normal again. He waved it off and stumbled back onto the sidewalk.

“Well, we can’t let Spidey get hurt now, can we?”

His voice was trembling. Weird. His hands were too. He shoved them in his pockets— in his belt pouches — In his pockets, sure, he shoved his hands into his pockets and soldiered on.

He couldn’t let Spidey get hurt. That was the one thing he knew, above all else. But if Weasel had already sold Spidey out to — who was the latest villain stalking NYC streets again? Some sort of goblin — to whoever his most recent self-declared archnemesis was, and if Deadpool clearly couldn’t do anything to stop them...

Well, there was really only one person to go to for help, wasn’t there? Or, more specifically, one _group_ of people. Fucking Avengers. He pounded his fist against his leg, soaking in the pain that flared up with each punch. Damn, he’d sworn to himself that he’d _never_ grovel, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and he needed to  grovel to make sure Spidey was protected and safe.

He drew up short at the next crosswalk and looked around himself, befuddled. It was dark now — when had that happened? The sky was all candlefire orange with the setting sun. He hadn’t been walking for that long, had he? He peered at the nearest street sign: 128th. Crap. He’d managed to get all the way up to Harlem? Without even noticing it? Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck. He needed get his grovelling started ASAP, the sooner Spidey’s protection detail kicked into action the better, but no superhero in their right mind would still be at work this late. Not even Deadpool, and he was far from in his right mind.

**_You know it, tiger!_ **

“ _Bad time_ , Yellow,” Deadpool hissed. He cast a swift glance around, but nobody had appeared to notice him. Good. He didn’t know who he could trust, and somehow he doubted that Iron Asshole would be inclined to hear him out if he started whipping out his guns and shooting up civilians in broad daylight — though really, more like broad twilight at this point, but Iron Ass didn’t seem the type who’d care about the details.

Anyway, the day was getting late but Deadpool seriously need to start grovelling ASAP — shit had already hit the fan, and he needed to get Iron Ass onboard before things went from bad to even more _way_ more bad. At least he actually knew where to find the guy this time, unlike with his hunt for Francis. That bitch was too good at hiding himself away. The infamous Tony Stark, on the other hand, liked to advertise his location in fifty-foot letters on the sides of his buildings — overcompensating much? Seriously, how had some random baddie not hunted him down and done off with him by now? Well, one superhero's arrogance was a merc with a mouth's benefit, and it was barely half an hour later that Deadpool was trotting up to Stark Tower, gleaming as gold as the sunset.

He peered in one of the lobby’s wall-length windows — seriously, what was it with multimillionaire brats and ostentatious wall-length windows at the entrances to their self-named buildings? —

**_Ooh it looks like a bank HAHAHA like a BANK let's GO IN AND ROB IT LET'S ROB THE BANK_ **

— and ignored Yellow's maniacal cackles echoing through his head. He needed him to _shut up_ , he needed to do everything he could to get Iron Ass on his side —

**You don't want us around? I'm hurt. Really. I am.**

— so he shoved the voices aside, ignored their continued whispers in the back of his mind, and marched into the lobby before he gave into the temptation to start yelling back at White and Yellow's taunts.

He was stopped barely three feet in the door.

“Sir.” A petite lady in a security vest stepped in front of him, blocking his path. “The building is closed to the public after 5pm.”

“Huh?” He halted in his tracks and stared at her in befuddlement. Glanced around at the various suits loitering around. Turned and stared at the sky, which had, sometime in the past few minutes, gone from a pretty sunset-gold to a more ominous-looking bruised purple. He smacked himself on the head and turned back to the security guard. “Doi! I’m an idiot. Of course it’s late now! Don’t you worry your pretty little head though, I’ll be in and out before you even—”

He took a step forward. The security guard planted her feet and placed her hand on his chest, pushing firmly back. He didn’t gain an inch.

“Sir, I’m afraid that I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” she said in a steely voice with a faux-pleasant smile, “unless you have an appointment to be in here.”

**_She can’t ask you to leave if she’s BLEEDING OPEN ON THE GROUND_ **

“Shush,” Deadpool hissed at Yellow, and turned a blinding smile upon the security guard, whose brow was now furrowed with suspicion. “An appointment, you say? Lucky me, I do have an appointment! So if I could just get to that—”

The guard pushed him back toward the revolving doors and unclipped her radio from her belt. “If I could just have the name of the person you’re meeting with?”

Deadpool let out a sigh. Did they really have to go through this whole song and dance?

**What, you didn’t see this coming? You’re a full-grown man in a red spandex bodysuit, walking into Stark Tower after office hours, armed with guns, knives, and two swords. Did you really think they were just going to let you in?**

“Shut _up_ ,” he hissed again, and then said to the security guard in his very sweetest cotton-candy voice, “I’m meeting with the Iron Ass.”

The guard stared back at him, face blank and uncomprehending.

“The Iron Asshole?” Still nothing. “Billionaire, wears obnoxious sunglasses indoors, has the attitude of a fourteen-year-old, actual age of fourteen written backward?” A flicker of something at the corner of her lips. “Playboy, cocky, arrogant, has his name printed at the top of this huge building that’s obviously compensating for something?”

A single eyebrow lifted, but her mouth hardly twitched. Damn, this lady had some fine muscle control. “You have a meeting with Tony Stark?”

He snapped his fingers and made finger-guns at her. Whoops, probably not a good idea in the Stark Tower lobby when he was carrying several very real guns on his person — he hastily tucked his thumbs into his fists so he was just very awkwardly pointing at her instead.

**Smooth.**

“Give the lady a prize! Yup, I’m just on my way to talk to him, I’ll be done in a jiffy—”

Her radio remained poised by her chin, but judging by the look on her face, she didn’t plan on using it anytime soon. “You. Have an appointment with Tony Stark.”

“Yes,” he snapped, “and it’s really quite urgent and I haven’t got much time so if you don’t mind could I just get past so I can actually _speak with him sometime this century?”_

Her other eyebrow lifted to join her first. Keeping her eyes on him, her hand planted firmly in the center of his chest, she pressed a button on the side of the radio and spoke into it.

“This is Mike Square to Papa, there’s a man in the lobby who says he has a meeting with the big boss. What’s your name?” She directed that last part at Deadpool.

Deadpool flashed her a two-handed heart. “Tell him his good friend DP’s here to talk with him about our friendly neighborhood spider.”

Her eyebrow, which had slowly lowered over the course of her monologue into the radio, now shot up again. “Right. The visitor calls himself DP, says he’s here to talk to the big boss about a spider. Dressed funny. Over.”

After a moment, the radio crackled. _“This is Papa to Mike Square, what did you say his name was? Over.”_

“He calls himself DP, as in Delta Papa,” the guard replied, and before she could quite finish with her “over”, Deadpool shouted, “Tell Iron Ass that it’s about Spidey, and it’s _real important!_ ”

The security guard glared at Deadpool, who shrugged at her in response.

After a moment, the radio crackled again. _“Did he just say... Iron Ass? Over,”_ it added, almost an afterthought.

“Yes, he did, over,” the security guard said into the radio, as Deadpool shouted again, “It’s short for _Iron Asshole_ , and it’s what’s gonna get ripped wide open if he kicks me out before I get to talk to him!”

Another pause. _“Ask him if he knows Wade Wilson. Over.”_

The security guard looked at him. He rolled his eyes, huffed out a sigh, and said, “Well, technically speaking, that’s my _real_ name, but you know, in the superhero business we can’t exactly afford to have—”

“He says that’s him. Over,” the guard said into her radio, right over all over Deadpool’s rambling.

The reply was instant. _“Don’t let him leave. Stark will be down in a few minutes. Call for backup if you need it. Papa out.”_

Both the security guard’s eyebrows went shooting up now, but Deadpool had more pressing concerns than Miss Eyebrows’ shock.

“Backup? _Don’t let him leave?_ The fuck—”

**Something’s fishy.**

**_Oooh maybe Iron Man also turned coat just like Weasel, that’s cold of him, I like it!_ **

**Stark’s never paid you any attention before. Why now?**

**_Maybe he’ll also turn against Spidey now? Maybe he’s in on the plan to kill Spidey now! I never woulda guessed he had it in him! D’you think he’s also in on the plan to kill Spidey? Huh? Huh?_ **

“Iron Man? He _wouldn’t_ ,” Deadpool snarled, but uncertainty churned in his gut, and he was numbly allowing the guard to guide him halfway across the lobby before he even realized where she was taking him. Once he did, he went rigid, and almost fell over when she plowed right into him.

“Sir, if you’ll just come this way, Mr. Stark will be with you in a moment,” she said, stiff as gangplank, but Deadpool wasn’t having any of that.

“Hoooold up just one second.”

He raised a finger and prepared to speak. She pulled him over her hip, tossed him over her shoulder, and carried him into an empty meeting room, where she promptly tossed him into a chair and left him. He was still trying to process what had just happened when he heard the _click-click_ of the door shutting and locking.

**_.....Whooooooooa._ **

**You’re kidding me.**

“That,” Deadpool said aloud to the empty room, “was kinda hot.” His heart was thudding madly in his chest as he stared up at the fuzzy dots dancing all across the ceiling.

**Get out of there. You know you have to. First Stark agrees to talk to you, easy as pie, and then he has his security guard lock you up in a room in the middle of nowhere?**

“That was kinda,” Deadpool repeated, “really, _really_ hot.” He flexed his fingers; yup, there it was, sweat gathered on his palms like on the skin between fat rolls.

**_Whoooooooooooooooooooooa. Where’d she learn to do that? D’you think we could learn to do that?_ **

**What’re you still sitting around here for? Get out! Get out, before Stark decides he wants to start dabbling in biology and taking a peek at your insides to figure out your healing factor—**

“Spidey would be real disappointed to have missed that,” Deadpool said. The walls were white and blank. Just a vast expanse of white, empty paint.

**I thought you didn’t like dying? Remember your whole shtick? You’ll come back but it still hurts?**

“He always did like to see me getting beat up. Especially by Iron Man. I think Spidey’s got a bit of a dad boner for the guy.”

**_That was so cool! Like Jackie Chan, fwoop-swish-chop and you’re DOWN take THAT!_ **

**_Get out._ ** **Get out while you still can. Don’t just sit there yammering about Spidey this, Spidey that, god I’m** **_sick_ ** **of it, if you care so much about Spidey then get moving to make sure Spidey sticks around for you to keep stalking like a creepy motherfucker—**

“What? Spidey? Oh, no. No, no, no no no no no. Spidey won’t get hurt.”

**_Mm, Spidey._ **

“Spidey’ll be safe.” Right? He had to be.

There was a _click-click_ , but the white wall didn’t move.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” That was a new voice, cockiness overflowing even in just those four simple words.. “Looks like I owe Coulson a trip to New Orleans. You know, he’s a great guy and all, but I didn’t think you’d actually, well, _be_ here.”

Slowly, Deadpool turned to face the figure standing in the doorway. Slicked-up hair, brown aviators, one hand shoved carelessly into his pocket. Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, AKA Iron Asshole, frowned down at his watch before finally deigning to glance up at Deadpool.

Deadpool said nothing.

After a moment, Stark sighed and shoved his other hand into his pocket as well. “It’s just, you know.” He shrugged, large and over-exaggerated. “After all this time, you turning up right in my lap? Seems too good to be true. So, what’s the catch? You’re gonna start, what, shooting the place up? Ask me for more info on, who is it this time, Norman Osborn? Or — oh, I know!” He snaps his fingers in mock realization. “It’s me this time, isn’t it? I know we were never on good terms, it only makes sense — are you here to kill me, this time?” He gestured at himself, raised an eyebrow at Deadpool. “Your new mission, to take down the great, the brilliant, the best, Tony Stark?”

**Make him shut up.**

“ _You_ shut up, White,” Deadpool said automatically, and Stark’s eyebrows crawled even higher.

“O-kay. Maybe not, then.” He shrugged, took off those obnoxious sunglasses and hooked them into his breast pocket. “Anyway. Hit me up, big boy. What’re you here for?”

**Yeah. What** **_are_ ** **you still here for?**

**_Silly silly li’l DP! You’re gonna get all munched up and tossed out, he’s gonna strip the skin and meat off your bones and suck out the marrow and then they’ll do it to Spidey too and build a shrine outta your bones together, ooh a bone shrine, that’s cute, doesn’t that sound too cute? I want a bone shrine._ **

**You’re making a big mistake here. Get out, before it’s too late —**

“What am I here for!” Deadpool clapped his hands together, shook his head in a vain attempt at clearing out the echoes of the voices in his mind. “That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you like to know.” Stark stared at him. “Right, no, you would like to know. My mistake, I should definitely answer that question for you. I am here to—”

**Get yourself killed?**

**_Get yourself AND Spidey killed!_ **

“ _No one_ ,” Deadpool said, loud and forcibly slow, “is getting killed! All right?”

“I’d sure hope so,” Stark commented, shifting his weight on his heels. “But if you don’t mind my asking, who exactly isn’t getting killed? And who isn’t doing the killing? It’s just, I feel like that might be relevant information.”

**You.**

**_You!_ **

**Only you.**

Deadpool forced himself to focus on Stark’s face, arranged in its usual semi-constipated expression. Heh. Constipated.

He was getting off-topic.

What was he doing here again?

“I know we haven’t exactly been the best of friends,” he began, slowly, “or, heck, even friends at all to be honest, but just — man to man, superhero to superhero: I need your help.”

Stark stared at him a moment longer. Then he scoffed.

“ _Superheroes_ . Yeah, you definitely need _some_ sort of help.” He took a step back and put a hand on the doorknob—

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Stark paused, hand resting gently against the doorknob, but not turning it quite yet. Deadpool’s voice was low and chilly, an undeniable current of _danger_ threaded all throughout — the voice he used for warning-off-the-baddies, it was a masterpiece, it was _terrifying_ — but Stark merely gave a long, obnoxious sigh, and shifted to face Deadpool again.

“You know, you only missed Parker by half an hour?”

“Parker?” Deadpool felt his face twist into a sneer. “Who’s _Parker_ supposed to be?”

Stark kept right on talking, as though Deadpool hadn’t even spoken. Typical asshole. “I mean, good thing the kid wasn’t here when you decided to show up, he’s already had enough disappointment since you up and ran away three weeks ago, for no good reason. You know, he still thinks you’re going to come back any day now?” Deadpool’s only response was to continue starking. Stark _tsk_ ed and looked aside. “For such a smart kid, he’s pretty dumb sometimes. But anyway. Sure, go ahead, tell me: what kinda help do you think you need?”

They were getting somewhere!

**Getting you straight into your grave.**

**_Into skeleton DP! Out of skeleton DP? Out of flesh-and-skin DP?_ **

**Into the frying pan, into the fire, then straight into the belly of the beast.**

Were those mixed metaphors? Deadpool felt like those might be mixed metaphors. He slapped himself a few times in the face and shook his head. Focus, _focus_. Spidey was depending on him.

“Help. Right. I need... Help.” He crossed his legs over each other. Uncrossed them. Leaned back in his chair and swung his legs up to let his heels fall, _thud-thud_ , atop the conference table. The hilt of one of his guns jabbed him uncomfortably in the stomach; he adjusted it as he pondered how to proceed.

Stark was still standing and staring at him, one eyebrow quirked in judgment, as he waited for him to continue.

Deadpool took a deep breath.

“All right, I know you and the Revengers haven’t always, shall we say, seen eye-to-eye with me, merc business and whatnot — I mean, not that I’m judging you guys, if you wanna be goody little two-shoes then go right ahead, who am I to stop you? — and I’ve never exactly been invited to be a part of whatever _Friendship Is Magic!_ stuff you’ve got going on here, though I would totally rock a Rainbow Dash hairdo if you did — But even though none of you exactly approve of me or what I do, and I always make fun of you guys and everything _you_ do, but Spidey’s different, right? He’s like, a mini-Avenger. I could totally see a mentorship thing going on between him and your bunch! Tony Stark, the mogul of Manhattan, and Captain America, native of Brooklyn, teaming up to guide Queen’s young friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man into great superness and et cetera, et cetera, but that can’t happen if Spider-Man’s dead, gone into the void, finite, _kaput_ , right? And unfortunately our friendly little Spider-Man’s attracted some big enemies—”

**More like** **_someone_ ** **attracted them to him.**

“--shut up, White — anyway, has attracted some big enemies who, what’s a metaphor for a spider-eating thing... Like the arachnid version of an anteater? An arachnoeater? Yeah, sure, there are arachnoeaters out after him who are determined to make sure Spidey doesn’t ever live long enough to become the best and greatest Spidey version of himself! And that’s a real shame, isn’t it? Don’t you think? You gotta protect the young blood, right, to keep the superhero name from dying out? So, what I’m thinking is, you can help make sure those arachnoeaters can’t get to our Arachno-Man, and I’ll go and hunt down those arachnoeaters and make sure they can’t eat anything anymore, so while you keep our Spidey safe, because he’s a great guy, a great guy who doesn’t deserve to die, _ooh_ a rhyme—”

**_Nice one!_ **

**Come on, you didn’t even try.**

“—and I can do all the bad-guy-hunting myself, it’s my fault they sprung up and decided to go after Spidey anyway, it’s my job to clear them out, so— That’s totally doable for you, right? Keeping Spidey safe to make sure he doesn’t get hurt while I go after the baddies? I mean, I’m already trying my best, keeping an ear or four out, trying to gather the names of _everyone_ who might’ve set their targets on Spidey, find out where they’re hiding out so I can go after them, keeping away from Spidey so I don’t draw any more attention to him—”

“Hold up.”

Deadpool clamped his mouth shut, hands frozen in midair, mid-gesture.

Stark had one hand slightly raised, a universal _stop_ sign if Deadpool had ever seen one. Now, he watched as that hand slowly rose to press firmly at Stark’s forehead.

Stark rubbed at his temples. Sighed.

“I have so many questions.”

“What—”

“ _So_ many questions,” Stark repeated, barreling right over Deadpool.

**_What an asshole!_ **

**Isn’t he?**

“Like.” He gestured out with his other hand, eyes still squeezed firmly shut in what could only appear to be disbelief. “ _So. Many. Questions_ . First of all: Spider-Man? Really? And second, who do you think would be trying to kill him anyway? And why would anyone ever want to kill _Parker?_ Plus, what’s that got to do with you? Who’re _you_ supposed to be? And is that really the reason why you’ve been running away so much — because seriously, that is like the most convenient, or actually, _inconvenient_ , way this could have possibly turned out—”

He sighed again and buried his face in both his hands.

Deadpool waited for him to continue.

**...Did he finally have an aneurysm and die?**

**_Yoo-hoo! YOO-HOO! Isn’t he supposed to be some mega-genius super-billionaire? He’s a li’l... flimsy, isn’t he?_ **

**It would serve him right. He always has been a goddamn—**

“You know what?” Stark threw his hands in the air. “Nope. Nope. _No_. I am not doing this anymore.” He shoved one hand into his, hello crisply-tailored suit pants, and pointed the other hand at Deadpool. “I’ve been watching Parker and Rogers and Tasha and, and your creepy drug-dealer friend, gopher or whatever his name is, try to get you to turn yourself in for three weeks with no results. So, screw their plan, I’m going with mine. My plans are always better anyway.”

**Does he ever give that ego a rest?**

“You,” Stark said, and didn’t he have the dark, half-crazed eyes of a mass murderer, very Dexter, maybe he had a third alter ego? “Are not okay. In the head, I mean. You were never okay in the head but ever since you ran away, you’ve been even less okay in the head than usual. All this, this superhero stuff? It doesn’t exist. Got it?”

**_Whaaaaat? What kinda weird experiments are going on in his lab? He sounds like he sniffed something not-so-fun._ **

“Parker’s been yammering on to us about, if you see him, don’t do this, don’t do that, but frankly that hasn’t been working out great, so: You are _delusional._ Need me to spell that out for you?”

**I think someone’s gotten to him. Francis doesn’t have connections this good in this city, does he?**

As Stark rambled on about god only knew what was going on in his crazy genius probably high as fuck brain, Deadpool glanced around. The only door was blocked behind Stark, and Deadpool didn’t fancy his chances against a repulsor blast if he tried going head-to-head with Iron Man to get out that way.

On the other side of the room, though, there were wall-length windows.

Deadpool slowly pushed his chair back from the table. Stark was still yammering on.

“At this point, I honestly think the kid’s just waiting for it to fix itself up. Stupid of him, if you ask me.” Stark wasn’t looking at him anymore, instead staring down at the ground with two fingers pressed against his ear, like he was doing a drunken imitation of Professor X. “Speaking from experience: if you just wait and hope that your problems fix themselves, eleven times out of ten, they’ll just get worse. — Oh hey, Coulson. Send them in, we’re capturing him.”

**_What!_ **

**Move it, lardass!**

At some point during Deadpool’s slowass crawl across the room (if three inches of movement could be called “moving”) Stark had stepped aside. As a result, when the door flew open, it only banged against the wall, instead of against that Iron Asshole’s smug, repulsive face as a horde of silver Iron Man-style drones burst into the room, palms raised and ready to fire.

No time for a sassy remark. Deadpool merely tossed the Iron Asses a pair of finger guns, gave them a wink and a smirk, and jumped out the window.

Thankfully, he threw himself at it with enough force that it shattered straightaway — good thing too, it would’ve _sucked_ to be stuck in that room and get captured by Iron Man’s Do-Gooding League of Evil Robots, not to mention flat-out embarrassing. What kind of superhero couldn’t break his way through a window when he needed to?

It only took him a few moments to roll to his feet, glass shards jabbing unpleasantly at his palms and various extremities, and dash away down the sidewalk, shoving his way past various startled pedestrians, all before the Iron Robots had so much as gasped.

**You got lucky this time,** White sniped at him as he ran. **You think you’ll be this lucky again?**

“Yeah...” Deadpool panted as he veered around a corner and kept on running. “Just... thank god... for corporate... assholes’... need... for natural lighting.”

**_Pffft!_ **

**I don’t think you realize how close you came to getting caught there. Do you have any idea what would’ve happened if you hadn’t made it out?**

Deadpool did, actually, but he resolutely didn’t let himself think about it until he was ten blocks away and sure that he’d shaken any robots off his tail. If he thought about it, that mental imagery combined with the stitch in the side would be sure to make him upchuck his cookies, and he did _not_ want to have to subject the sidewalks to that.

 

* * *

 

* * *

 

**What now?**

White’s voice was like a drone in Deadpool’s mind, an unending stream of snark and disapproval and aggravated sniping. He ignored it — as best he could, anyway — as he paced to one moldy wall of the apartment, then turned on his heel and paced back to the other wall. One, two, three steps, and repeat ad infinitum.

What now, indeed.

Clearly, going to the Avengers for help had been a total bust. Deadpool didn’t know what he’d ever done to them that had made them so eager to sell him out to Fucking Francis — actually, he had some ideas — the point was, it was Spidey’s beautiful ass that was going to be on the line if Deadpool couldn’t _man_ the _fuck_ up _now_ and _break_ Francis’s _ugly-_ ass _face_ before he could lay even a _finger_ on New York’s most beloved arachnish superhero.

**You’re just going to let them walk all over you like this?**

Deadpool reached the wall again. Turned.

**Not much of a merc anymore, are you? You’ve gone all soft. Time was, the** **_moment_ ** **Stark started mouthing off to you, you’d have your guns out and blazing. But now, you just sit there and take it while he calls you all sorts of crazy, and while you’re off daydreaming about fucking puppies and rainbows and sunshines you almost let yourself get captured and end up in Francis’s greasy, grimy paws. Again.**

Deadpool was so many sorts of crazy, Stark didn’t even know the start of it. Just like Deadpool didn’t know the start of all the shit he’d go through if he ended up in Francis’s clutches again. Aw, fuck, he’d reached the wall again, what genius architect had decided to make this apartment so tiny?

**And you’re still as useless as ever, just wearing a hole through the floor, like an idiot, pacing duck, while Stark and all the other Avengers, and even** **_Weasel_ ** **now, hunt you down — or maybe they’ve moved on to hunting down Spider-Man already? I mean, even** **_Weasel’s_ ** **decided to betray you, not a far leap from that to going after—**

“Okay, okay, no one is hunting down _anyone!_ Okay?”

Deadpool’s voice echoed through the vast, empty apartment. For once, the voices were silent.

“No one is going after Spidey,” he said, to the empty room, again.

Silence. Like sitting in a movie theatre watching The Ring, just a bunch of eerie tree silhouettes filling the screen, except there wasn’t even Naomi Watts’ heavy breathing or the bass-heavy, deliberately creepy background music in the background. Just those fucking ugly-ass staticky trees, waiting for the dead girl’s creepy face to finally explode onto the screen, praying for someone to at least eat a handful of fucking popcorn so there would be _anything else to focus on_ besides just waiting for the shadows and trees and weird pink-blue sky to resolve into—

“No way in hell am I letting Francis chop up Spidey like fucking David Dorfman,” Deadpool said aloud, and came to a screeching halt in the middle of the floor.. “No way. Just... No. _No_.”

White scoffed. **As if you could stop it.**

“No. No.” He began tugging at the straps of his belt, struggling to get it off. He needed to check his ammo, and — and his guns, and his swords, and his knives — and — He just needed to — to get going before he wasted any more time. “I am _not_ letting anything happen to Spidey.” Katanas on his back; guns in their holsters, fully loaded up; knives in their sheaths, sharp enough to leave a line of red beading up on his thumb. “Francis can have at me if he wants, but he is _not_ dragging Spidey into this.”

**You’re an idiot.**

“ _You’re_ the idiot,” Deadpool shot back, but without his usual heat. He didn’t want to end up strapped to that table again, with Francis’ ugly mug sneering above him, but if that was what it took to keep Spidey safe... He’d do it, he guessed. If there was ever anyone worth going stupidly superhero-y self-sacrificial for, it was Spidey.

**He’s going to take you down in a second. You’ll be strapped back down to that table before you can even blink. And once you’re there, you can kiss your freedom and pain-free lifestyle goodbye.**

“Worth it!” Deadpool sang, and kicked the door down before White’s poisonous words could infect his mind and make him want to take it back—

**See if you’re still saying that in two years, when he flays you open down to the bone and hangs you up on his wall like a taxidermied animal.**

So much for that then.

He tried to skip down the steps, tried humming a mindless little tune to keep the air light and carefree, but White just wouldn’t. Stop. Talking.

**Remember being strapped down to that bench, so tight you couldn’t even twitch? Remember how the lab coats always laughed when you struggled to move? Like a worm, they called you, like a fucking worm—**

**_Oooh, if they leave you there long enough, d’you think you’ll get all shriveled up and nasty and skin-rotted? You know, like that guy in Seven, the movie with Brad Pitt, with the guy that got chained or handcuffed or whatever to a bed for foreeeeeeeever and ended up like_ ** **totally** **_nasty and ugly—_ **

Great. Now Yellow had joined in, Deadpool would never get them to shut up.

“Once I kill Francis,” he said aloud, ducking out the back exit and into the dark alleyway beyond, “I’m going to have chimichangas. All the chimichangas. Because chimichangas are the best.”

**Maybe you want to get those now, because at Weapon X, they probably won’t bother to feed you at all at Weapon X, forget feeding you Tex-Mex.**

“And I’ll blow up the lobby of Stark Tower, to piss off that Iron Ass, because good god does he deserve it.”

**_Ooooh Francis is gonna blow_ ** **you** **_up HAHAHA blow you up like a party balloon!_ **

“And then I’ll hunt down Weasel and kill him too, the traitor. Teach him to try to cross the merc with a mouth.”

**Like Francis is going to teach you for trying to take him down on your own? And what for? To try to impress some wannabe superhero who would never even—**

“Hey now,” Deadpool snapped. “Spidey isn’t a _wannabe superhero_ , he’s the _best_ superhero out there, the OG to trump all OGs, go on about me all you want but you don’t. Touch. Spidey. _No one_ touches Spidey.”

**_Awwwwww. You sound like a puppy, all yippy-yappy to protect your master! How cuuuuuuute._ **

**A master he’s not even going to get to see again, because he’ll be too busy getting tortured by Francis to do his creepy stalker routine with Spidey after tonight.**

That, somehow, was the taunt that stopped Deadpool dead in his tracks. Because it was true — the one person he was doing this all for, the one person he was trying to protect, was a person he only ever saw once every other week max, a person who would probably only ever call himself Deadpool’s friend under extreme duress, and even then, probably wouldn’t even mean it. Here Deadpool was, quite literally ready to lay down his _life_ for Spidey, when ordinarily Spidey wouldn’t even give him the time of day.

And he couldn’t even go find Spidey now for one last masochistic glimpse of that fine, pert ass, or, all right, a few minutes’ final banter with the mouthy superhero, because that would defeat the purpose of keeping Spidey safe. Spidey could only ever be safe if Deadpool himself stayed far, far away.

Damn. Deadpool thought he might actually cry now. Big, fat, manly tears of failed bromance because he might never going to get to see Spidey again.

**See? I knew you could never do it. You don’t have the guts.**

Nope, nope, that was it. Deadpool was not going to tolerate any more of White’s shit-talking.

**Too scared to handle the truth?**

He wasn’t going to just lie down and take any of this crap either. If he wanted to see Spidey again, he’d damn well get to see Spidey again! Or, well, not _see_ him, since he really was quite committed to keeping Spidey far, far away from harm, but... Surely he could allow himself the next best thing?

He scrabbled through his pouches for his phone — still at just under forty percent battery, thank god, he was always so _bad_ at remembering to charge it — and scrolled through his contacts list.

**What do you think you’re doing?**

Deadpool raised a middle finger to the sky.

**You’re an idiot. You’re actually an idiot.**

✨DAT✨❤CUTE❤✨✨✨ASS✨✨✨😍😍😍😍 was right at the top of the list. He pressed it, brought his phone up to his ear,

**You’re pathetic. You think you can keep him safe? You think he’ll even want to speak to you now? You’re a fool, a fucking fool, who’s going to get** **_ripped apart_ **

and waited.

The phone rang.

**and trapped in that hellhole for the rest of eternity**

And rang.

**because you’re too foolish to admit**

And rang.

**that no matter what you do, you’ll never**

_“Hello?”_ The voice at the other end was surprisingly rough — it wasn’t that late at night, was it? Deadpool glanced up at the black sky, but no helpful LED numbers popped into view to let him know the exact time. _“Whozzit?”_

“Spidey!” Deadpool exclaimed, and threw out his arms to give Spidey a spiritual hug. That was totally something that could be transmitted over the phone, that was exactly how technology worked, he wasn’t an engineer, how was he supposed to know? “It’s been way too long, my eight-legged pal! How’ve you been?”

_“Wade?”_ Aaaaaand just like that, Spidey sounded as up and alert as if he hadn’t just been woken up at fuck o’clock by Deadpool who was _definitely_ his bestest friend ever in the whole wide world, screw whatever the voices had to say to that. _“Is that you, Wade?”_

“The one, the only, the best, the greatest!” He propped his free hand on his hip, leaned against the least grimy patch of brick wall he could find, and beamed a blinding beam that Spidey would never get to see. “Can I just say how _lovely_ it is to hear your voice? It’s been too long, a whole, what, couple of days? Heroin addicts have gone into withdrawal over less!”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Deadpool could just picture Spidey face-palming, maybe staring at the phone with the disbelief and vague air of disapproval that he always had when talking to Deadpool. _“This isn’t your number, what phone is—? You know what? Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Where are you right now?”_

Deadpool continued blithely on, as if Spidey hadn’t spoken. Which he really kinda hadn’t. Not about anything important, anyway. “Ooh, you know it gets me all hot and bothered when you talk condescending to me like that, do it some more! Actually, don’t, because I’m on a _teeeensy_ bit of a time limit here—”

He gave a tiny, short, miniscule, in-fi-ni-te-si-mal pause here to lift his hand and show, with his forefinger and thumb squeezed together, just how _teensy_ of a time limit it was. Spidey jumped into that teensy pause to interrupt. Rude.

_“Time limit? Are you in trouble? What’s happening? Come on, W— Come on, talk to me.”_

“Never thought I’d hear that from you, Spidey, usually it’s all just _shut up, Deadpool,_ and _leave me alone, Deadpool,_ and _un-aliving people is BAD, Deadpool, BAD—_ ”

_“Please.”_ There was something thick and horribly sloppy about Spidey’s voice, coming all tinny and breaking-apart through the shitty cell signal. “ _Please, Wade. Don’t... Just. Please._ ”

And Deadpool could only stand there and listen as Spidey heaved in breath after heavy, grainy breath, someplace across the city where Deadpool wouldn’t, _shouldn’t_ , be able to find him if he tried.

It took a while before Spidey’s deep, shaky breathing eased off. Then there was just silence.

Deadpool had never been particularly good with silences.

“You wanna go out for waffles tomorrow morning?” he blurted, into the still, silent night.

More silence, as Deadpool fidgeted and cursed himself for opening his big, dumb, fugly mouth. Before he could open it and embarrass himself even further, Spidey’s voice drifted across the line: “ _Waffles?_ ”

“Yeah. You know.” He gave a vague sort of wave. “Waffles. The better version of a pancake. Golden crunchy batter that’s basically a bunch of tiny little bowls to hold syrupy goodness, _real_ maple syrupy goodness, none of that Aunt Jemima bullcrap she probably distills from the droppings in her—”

“ _Tomorrow morning?_ ”

“When the sun comes up, tomorrow, tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar—”

“ _God.”_ Spidey huffed out a mushy sort of sigh. “ _You never change, do you. I’ll — I’ll definitely go out for waffles with you, of course I will. But — uh, you sure you wouldn’t rather go...now, instead?”_

There was a pause, of the did-a-skunk-just-fart-into-my-mouth-or-is-that-just-the-taste-of-my-own-foot variety, and then Spidey was hurriedly continuing, “ _I don’t mean — I mean, just — why wait when you can just have it now, you know? Instant gratification, and — well, I could wait for the morning, for sure, only... You know there are 24-hour IHOPs all over the city, I’m sure you could reach one without any problem, and speaking of, where are you right now, anyway? I could come pick you up, it’s no biggie, just give me your address, and I’ll be right there, just wait for me to come by and—”_

“I’d love to, Spidey,” Deadpool cut in, because Spidey was sounding vaguely panicked and Spidey should _never_ sound even the slightest bit panicked, “and I really, really sure wish I could, and I hate to disappoint but I just can’t make it right now. Got appointments to get to, people to visit, supervillains to un-alive—”

“ _What?_ ”

He smacked himself in the forehead. “Right. I know you don’t approve of the un-aliving but it’s for a good cause this time, I promise! Vengeance, pure and simple! You approve of vengeance, right?”

“ _Wade — Deadpool — who are you... going after?_ ”

“Awwwww, come on, Spidey, d’you really need to know? It’s not important, anyway.”

“ _I’m just — I just — Can you...”_ There was a frustrated sigh on the other end of the line. Then some rustling, a little thumping around, maybe even some click-clacking in the background of glass, or ceramic, or who knew what, really. “ _Just tell me where you are, okay?”_

“Sorry,” he sang out, “no can do! But how does the IHOP on 14th, 11 o’clock tomorrow, sound to you? Too early? Too late? Maybe we should move it back another four or five hours, I _reeeeally_ like my mornings in bed—”

“ _I’d really rather if we met up right now. If you won’t tell me where you are, then will you come to me? I’ll give you my address, if you need to catch a cab I’ll even—_ ”

“Spidey,” Deadpool said suspiciously. “What’s this with meeting up right now? You’re not up to something, are you?”

Damning silence on the other end of the line.

“Cause I gotta say, if you are, that really, really ain’t cool. I thought we were, well, maybe not besties, but buds at least. Red spandex, smart-aleck mouth, you know. I thought we had a _thing_ going on. You wouldn’t sell me out to Francis like Weasel did, would you?”

“ _Francis,_ ” Spidey breathed out on the other end of the line, and sighed. “ _Wade. Deadpool. Do you trust me?”_

And, well, even though every voice in Deadpool’s head — all two of them — were screaming at him to **don’t be an idiot, you IDIOT, he’s obviously plotting something, why else would he be so desperate to meet you in the middle of the night? You can’t trust him! What, has your brain finally rotted away to mush?** , and that **_something ain’t cool about Spidey, I don’t like his vibes... Hey White, White, this is real suspicious, ain’t it? Spidey sure seems up to something, don’t he?_ **, he could only give one answer.

“Of course I trust you, Spidey. I’ll always trust you. To the ends of the earth and back.”

There was another sigh at the end of the line. A pause. Another sigh.

“ _Then... Will you trust me when I say that Francis isn’t in town?_ ”

**How does he know that? There’s no way he could know that unless he were in cahoots with Francis somehow, hang up on him** **_now_ ** **, why did you call him in the first place anyway, what a moronic thing to do**

“ _Whatever you’re hunting him down for, whatever... revenge... you think you’re getting? It’s not worth it. Just — tell me where you are, and I’ll pick you up, and if you need help with anything I’ll help you out but just — please. Trust me, just this once, okay?_ ”

And Deadpool wavered. On the one hand, trusting Spidey, how could he _not_ trust Spidey, Spidey was his one and only and role model and everything he’d ever looked up to, everything he’d ever believed in, and Spidey was just asking this one _tiny little thing_ from him so surely, surely it would be all right if he just walked over toward that street sign in the distance and read off the address over the phone, surely it would be all right to let Spidey take him wherever he wanted to go and then—

**_then BASH his SKULL and RIP OUT his INTESTINES so Francis can turn ‘em all into a neat li’l rug like the Persian ones they sell in those markets, paint the Spidey-gut rug with his blood and brains and hang it up to dry_ **

And then Francis would hunt Deadpool down, and find him with Spidey, and kill Spidey, and good-as kill Deadpool, and take Deadpool away back to the Weapon X labs for torture and experiments where he would never see Spidey ever again because Spidey would be dead because Deadpool had let Francis kill him.

Deadpool took a deep breath, and spoke.

“Sorry, baby boy, you gotta believe me when I say I _do_ trust you, I trust you with all the rest of my immortal life and everything that goes along with it but I gotta go find Francis cuz I _know_ he’s in the city somewhere and it’s not safe, it’s not safe, for you or for me and doubly so for you _and_ me together so I can’t see you now, I’m sorry, I gotta go take care of Francis first but I promise as soon as I’m done I’m gonna go straight to that IHOP and we’ll have waffles together because I can’t let Francis get me without seeing you one more time — or at least without eating one more chimichanga cuz chimichangas are great — but I can’t let him capture me before I see you at least _one last time_ so I can’t come to you now because I hafta hunt him down and kill him first so he can’t ever hurt me or you ever again, okay? And I promise as soon as I’m done with that, if I’m still alive, which I _probably_ will be, I’m just gonna go ahead and say that I will be, don’t you worry your pretty head about it, as soon as I’m done taking care of him I’m gonna go right to that IHOP and meet you there, okay? I promise. I promise.”

“ _Wade — what do you mean ‘if’ — what are you — Wade — WADE — “_

Deadpool hung up on Spidey’s shouts still filtering through the line. Then powered off the phone when it kept ringing as Spidey kept calling back, once after twice after thrice after _screen black_. Then threw the phone into the first dumpster he comes across, just because he felt like it.

**You're a liar. A filthy fucking liar. You know that?**

Deadpool shoved his hands in his pockets and kept right on down the street.

**You can talk the talk but you never could walk the walk. How do you think Spidey's going to feel when he waits for you tomorrow and you never show? You know, you always blab on about how much you like the guy, but it sure didn’t seem like it just now when you were leading him on about those waffles tomorrow morning. How long do you think he’ll wait for you before he finally realizes you aren’t coming? Before or after Francis cuts into your insides?**

**_Ooooooooh before he pulls out your eyeballs and pours your guts into your eye sockets and shoves your fingers down your throat_ **

The street lights kept flickering overhead, and really it was super annoying like _really_ annoying but that was what he got for squatting in an abandoned apartment in the worst part of town he guessed.

**I’d ask if you have enough of a conscience to feel bad about lying to him like that, but you can’t betray someone who never cared about you in the first place, can you? And we all know that Spidey never gave a** **_shit_ ** **about you.**

**_Stitch your feet to your wrists and your wrists to your ankles and laugh as you try to walk around_ **

There was another person walking slowly on the other side of the street. Deadpool watched her out of the corner of his eye for a bit as the two of them walked down the street together, side by side, pace by pace.

**Seems awfully funny that he’d agree to meet with you on such short notice, doesn’t it? And for waffles, of all things. You think Spidey would ever willingly spend more time with you than absolutely necessary? God, you’re delusional. He never cared about you.**

**_And pour acid down your throat and boiling water in your stomach and stir stir stir till you’ve got ribcage soup, mmmm boiled lungs and scalded liver and ooooh human tripe!_ **

The stranger across the street was hunched over, hands shoved in her pockets, hood pulled low over her head. In the shitty street lighting, and from this far away, Deadpool couldn’t make out a single one of her features.

He stopped. The stranger took two more long, slow paces, and then stopped too.

**He was probably just planning to sell you out too. After all, he’s best buds with the Avengers, isn’t he? Stark probably called him up as soon as you busted out of the tower, told him to keep an eye out for you to help bring you in. He probably contacted Stark the** **_moment_ ** **he picked up your call. Wasn’t it suspicious how he kept wanting to meet up right away? Why else do you think he insisted on it, other than so the Avengers could sweep in and lock you away for good?**

**_A bullet in your thigh and a bullet in your eye and a knife cross your throat so they can all watch the FIREWORKS! I love fireworks!_ **

The stranger had started walking again, a little faster than before, a definite hurry in her step — and now wasn’t that funny? Where would she be in such a hurry to get to, this late at night all on her own?

**Meanwhile you’re here, all stupidly moony-eyed over someone who doesn’t even—**

“Shut _up_ ,” Deadpool hissed at White, only maybe a little louder than necessary, because on the other side of the street, the stranger had broken out into a run.

“Shit,” Deadpool muttered, and sprinted after her. No way was he letting the first lead he’d gotten on Francis in _months_ get away that easily.

**That’d be just like you though, wouldn’t it?**

The mole was really going for it, arms flailing as she tried to get away, but no ordinary _person_ could outrun Deadpool, the mighty, the greatest, the strongest and fastest—

**_Slice his hamstrings, then he can’t run!_ **

Deadpool ignored Yellow’s suggestion. Yellow’s suggestion was a terrible suggestion. Instead, when Deadpool finally caught up with the fleeing minion, he grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, and them slammed her up against the nearest brick wall. _Classic._

The girl, now that Deadpool could finally see her face, was all bug-eyed and fish-mouthed, terror all over her face. Deadpool had never seen that face before, but then, who knew how many forgettably-faced henchmen Francis had on his payroll?

“Where’s Francis?” he demanded, all up and close into the round-eyed underling’s face.

“I-I-I-I don’t know,” the lackey stammered back, hands splayed awkwardly out to either side of her face. “Look man, just — I’ll give you my wallet, my keys, whatever, just let me go—”

**_Chop her nose off make her talk!_ **

Well, de-nosing her seemed a bit much, but Deadpool liked Yellow’s intimidation idea at least. With his free hand, he whipped out one of his guns and shoved the muzzle up against the girl’s head.

The girl tried to look at the gun pressed against her temple. It had a funny effect, the pupils disappearing almost entirely into the corners of her eyes, till it was nearly just all-white left. “Dude, is that—” The bug-eyes stayed big and buggy but the girl’s eyebrows went scrunched down, up, down, lopsided, like she couldn’t decide what she wanted to do with them. “Is that a _nerf gun?_ ”

“ _Where’s Francis?_ ” Deadpool bellowed into the girl’s face, except it looked like Yellow’s intimidation suggestion hadn’t worked out after all, _dammit, Yellow_ , because now the girl’s eyebrows were decisively scrunched down in pissiness.

“What the hell, man? Do you think I’m — think I’m stupid or something? Nobody’s gonna fall for that, that cheap shit, I’m not _blind_.”

Deadpool took a step back to aim at the girl’s knee and fire, all casual, very mercenary-with-a-grudge-like. Except the moment he released the girl, the girl shoved at him, hard enough to make him take a step backward. Then she shoved him again. And again.

“Hey,” Deadpool started, feeling his own brows scrunch up now because this wasn’t the usual script. “What do you think you’re—”

That was when the guy punched him. In the face. Hard.

**_Ooooooooooooh! Good job, minion! That musta_ ** **hurt!**

**What the hell? You just let him hit you?**

Deadpool clutched at his face. His left eye felt like someone had taken a blowtorch to it, but at least the underling, now just a fuzzy hopping blob in Deadpool’s blurry vision, seemed to have gotten hurt just as bad.

Deadpool fumbled for his gun — when’d he drop that on the ground? He was seriously losing his touch here — as the other girl hissed and hopped and flailed and generally made an idiot of herself.

“Who’s the real idiot here, hmm?”

Deadpool stopped.

He recognized that voice. Oooh, he’d recognize that slimy, creepy, _disgusting_ voice anywhere.

“Ohh, look at you, all bent over for me. Like a bitch in heat. How sweet of you.”

The minion had vanished. Who cared about the minion. The voices were going haywire in his head — who cared about the voices. Slow as molasses, Deadpool reached for the gun, then straightened — ignoring the smarting of his eye, which of course still hurt like a mother — before finally turning to face

Francis.

That rat-faced son of a _motherfucker_ stood in the middle of the road, his smirk lit up sickly yellow from the flickering overhead lights. Slowly, he stepped toward Deadpool, hands jammed in his black leather pants pockets, as though mocking, _You think you can beat me? You’ve been busting your ass trying to find me and stop me these past few weeks, while I’ve still hardly even broken a sweat._

“What’s the matter?” Francis chuckled, a high, reedy sort of sound that was exactly the kind of chuckle that Deadpool would expect to come out of an ugly face like Francis’s. “Aren’t you going to fight me? Isn’t that your whole...” He shrugged, sort of. A casual hitch of his shoulders, like a _fuck you Deadpool very much_. “Shtick?”

“Oh, you bet your lardy ass I’m gonna fight you.” Deadpool pulled out his other gun. Gun in one hand, gun in the other hand, twirl them both around for a bit of a flourish because Deadpool was nothing if not dramatic.

Francis stopped dead mere feet away, still smirking that hideous smirk, the tail ends of his long black coat — and seriously, when had that become a thing? Who did this guy think he was, Sherlock Holmes? — flaring out behind him like a supervillain cape. Like the least classy version of a supervillain cape that ever existed.

“What’re you gonna do, shout at me?”

“I’m going to kill you,” Deadpool promised, and raised his guns and opened fire.

_Bang bang_ , through the open air, _bang bang,_ through the black shadows and dim splotches of light, _bang bang,_ and again, and again, echoing against crumbling brick walls, while Francis just stood and smiled and took it.

Deadpool kept going until all that would come out of his guns was a measly little _click click_ . Then he went for his backup guns, _bang bang, bang bang,_ over and over, into Francis’s unwavering smirk, his loose shoulders, his hands still shoved into his pockets. He went over and over, again and again, until all his guns were empty, dry, depleted, and Francis was still standing there with that shit-eating grin, so Deadpool pulled out his knife and rushed at Francis, holding the blade high—

And Francis, easy as pie, smirking like a fucking cat who’d just sent the last bottle of cream clattering _smash_ to the ground, took an easy little step to the side and seized Deadpool’s wrist. No matter how he struggled, the blade remained hovering in the air, way too far from Francis’s smug face, which he now brought in nauseatingly close to Deadpool’s snarl.

“Is that all you’ve got?” Francis said in that ridiculous reedy voice, all Regina George plastic. “I must say, Deadpool, I’m really quite disappointed. I thought you’d have—” He pursed his lips up at Deadpool’s fist, clenching tighter and tighter around the handle of that knife still too far away. “--just a little more fight in you, perhaps. But honestly, this is just way too easy.”

He caught the fist that came flying toward his face, and _tsk_ ed gently. “And _that_ was just slow. I think you’re losing your touch, Wade.”

“I’ll kill you,” Deadpool snarled at him.

“No, I don’t think you will,” Francis said easily back. “I think I might kill you though, just for the fun of it, even if you don’t stay dead. It’ll be fun, just like old times. What do you say?”

Deadpool kneed Francis in the balls. The bastard didn’t even twitch.

“I hope you’re not still under the delusion that you can do anything to stop me.” Francis tutted a bit. “I mean, I’d think it fairly obvious by now, that if I really want something from you...” He glanced pointedly up and down at both of Deadpool’s trembling arms, still caught in an unwavering grip. And he smiled, a long, slow, creeping smile. “There isn’t much you can do to stop it.”

And then, then, he just _let Deadpool go._

Well, threw him to the ground was more like it, and while Deadpool was still cursing and scrambling for his knife and trying to get his feet back under him, Francis stepped back and said, in that mocking disgusting patronizing revolting _mold_ of a voice, “Well, I really must be off, but I promise I’ll be back for you. I could hardly miss out on all this _fun_. Oh, and go ahead and keep searching for me, or running from me, or whatever it is you decide to do. I’ll come back for you when I want to come back for you, and when I do...”

Deadpool glanced up just in time to catch the flash of Francis’s teeth in the dim orange light.

“At least try to put up a fight next time, would you? It’s no fun otherwise.”

By the time Deadpool got to his feet, Francis was gone.

**Brilliant. Just brilliant.**

“Shut up,” Deadpool snapped. He shoved his knife back in its sheath, then bent over to pick up all his guns. Fat lotta good they’d done him in the end.

**You can’t seriously think he just let you go for the shits and giggles. You think you’re that lucky? He’s planning something, he has to be — he’s let you go for a** **_reason_ ** **, and let’s talk about that, by the way, the fact that you had to be** **_let go_ ** **because you were as useless in that fight as a sponge.**

**_He’s gonna be baaaack before you know it, better watch your back else Francis’ll creep up on it, like a slenderman with a face, he’s lookin’ for you, he’s gon’ find you, he’s gon’ FIND you you DUMB you SO DUMB you REALLY DUMB_ **

He smacked the side of his head, like knocking water free from his ears after a swim, but no matter how hard he smacked the voices wouldn’t stop yammering and yammering and

“He’s not gonna come back,” he said aloud, because if he couldn’t make the voices shut up he could at least try to drown them out, that was always a viable strategy, right? “And if he tries, I’ll tear him to pieces.”

**Oh, Deadpool.** White’s voice was just as condescending as Francis’s had been, just a few minutes earlier, and for the briefest of moments, Deadpool hated White more than he’d ever hated anything in his entire life. **Stop lying to yourself. There’s no fun in that.**

 

* * *

 

At 10:48 AM the next day, Spidey stumbled through the doors of the IHOP on 14th, glanced around with the desperation of a man only steps away from life or death, and froze when his gaze landed on a table in the corner.

Deadpool waved with artificial cheer. There was a stack of menus piled in front of him, haphazard and unopened.

Spidey stumbled his way over to him, bumping into a number of table corners on the way. He didn’t seem to notice.

“You’re actually here,” Spidey breathed, and wow, was that awe in Spidey’s voice?

“Gee, Spidey,” and Deadpool ducked his head in a mockery of bashfulness and tucked his hands into his lap so that Spidey wouldn’t see their trembling. “You sure know how to make a guy feel wanted!”

And he laughed a grainy sort of laugh that sounded like a face being dragged across pavement.

Spidey frowned as he sat down in front of him. “Are you okay? What happened to your eye?”

Deadpool reached up to touch his cheek, which, surprise, was still swollen and tender from the minion’s punch the night before. The fuck was going on with that?

“My healing factor fucking up is what happened to my eye.” Maybe Francis had stabbed him with something. Injected him with an anti-healing serum. Sprayed it in the air. Or maybe he was just fucked now and there was nothing he could do about it—! No, no, no; he shook his head to dispel Yellow’s whispering in the back of his head. “Whatever, it’s not important. How ya doin’, Spidey? Had fun swinging around the streets last night, business as usual? Stopped a few muggings, reported a few petty crimes?”

Spidey flagged down the nearest waitress to place a hasty order, just water for now, thanks, and turned back to Deadpool as the waitress bustled away. “I don’t think—”

“Look at you, charming the service staff like that,” Deadpool exclaimed, “you know how long it took me to get them to even _acknowledge my existence_ earlier? I mean, I know spandex isn’t the hottest look in town, but seriously! It took me ten minutes just to convince them to give me a table! Talk about crappy customer service.”

Spidey opened his mouth. Shut it. Opened it again.

“Wade,” he said, almost meekly, and wow, that was not a way that Spidey should _ever_ sound, no siree indeed, “can you tell me what’s going on?”

All Deadpool could hear in the back of his mind was White’s hissing about how Deadpool shouldn’t trust Spidey so easily, shouldn’t say a single fucking word, so naturally Deadpool opened his mouth and replied:

“First things first, Spidey, you gotta know I have _mad_ respect for you, I mean, there aren’t very many red-spandexed superheroes around the city to be role models to freelance mercs but even if there were, you’d be _numero uno_ , top of the top, best of the best, you’re like everything I ever wanted to be but could only fantasize of being, ya know? So don’t take this the wrong way or anything because I’m sure you can defend yourself plenty well when it comes to it, but things in the city are _dangerous_ right now, and you really need to lie low for the next bit, but I promise I’m going to sort things out and as soon as I have you can go back to being the friendly neighborhood bike thief-catcher. I just need to find Francis, and take care of him so he’s not a threat anymore, and _yes White I can totally win in a fight with Francis any day, shut up, I’m in the middle of talking to Spidey here_ , and then everything will be peachy-keen. Also,” he added, softer, a little more miserably, “it’s been a while, and I. I just. I’ve missed you.”

There was a pause. Deadpool looked down at the table and started picking the fluffy fibers off his napkin. He managed to amass a marble-sized cloud of them before  Spidey finally replied.

“Wade.” Spidey sounded just as miserable he did, and _wow,_ if Deadpool just ignored how goddamn sad that made him then it was kind of amazing actually, was misery contagious or something? “There’s nothing...” Another pause. Deadpool risked a glance up to find Spidey staring off into the distance, the rhythmic tensing and untensing of his jaw the only sign that he hadn’t just completely vanished off into cuckoo land. Finally Spidey sighed and clasped his hands on the tabletop. He leaned slightly toward Deadpool, an almost unconscious motion, as he asked, slowly, carefully, cautiously, “Are you okay?”

The words burst out of him again, like a dam breaking. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine, totally fine, just dandy, other than how I got into a little fight with Francis’s minion last night — you know, right before Francis himself showed up and proceeded to beat the living _shit_ out of me. I think he discovered how to make himself invulnerable to bullets, is that a thing? Well anyway, I’m pretty sure he found a way to cancel my healing factor too, because—” Deadpool touched the swollen area around his eye again, and winced. Bad idea, bad idea, eventually he was going to learn _not_ to do that though he could only hope it would take him less time than it’d taken Pavlov’s dogs. “--you know, I’m not healing up the way I should, but that’s a minor detail, it’ll all sort itself out eventually. But I’m fine. Completely fine. Peachy-keen.”

The more Deadpool ranted, the more Spidey’s shoulders ratcheted up, little by little, until he looked like someone had strapped his back to a wooden plank. Then Deadpool said, “Actually I probably shouldn’t stick around, not for long anyway, I really do hafta find Francis as soon as possible,” and it was like Spidey just metamorphosed into stone.

“Don’t go,” Spidey said quickly, the words practically running together into one with how fast he said them: _dontgo._ Deadpool blinked at him.

White’s whispers kept running in the back of his head, too loud to ignore: Spidey’s plotting something, you moron, get out before it’s too late.

“Shut UP,” Deadpool bellowed, and instantly regretted it when Spidey flinched back. “No, not you, it’s just — the voices, you know, they’re not shutting up.” As if to prove his point, he smacked the side of his head, which predictably did nothing but leave him with a slight ringing in his ears. And of course, White’s voice still spitting in the background, but he could ignore that, he would just have to ignore that.

God, his head hurt.

“Okay. Last night.” Spidey had gone back to leaning over the table, as if he was being pulled toward Deadpool, as if he _wanted_ to be closer to Deadpool — but that didn’t make any sense, did it? Spidey couldn’t stand his guts. “You were... out, hunting Francis. And Francis... attacked you? Is that right?”

“I totally could’ve beat him, if I was actually trying,” Deadpool sniffed, and leaned back in his chair. Across from him, Spidey shut his eyes in silent prayer.

“Wade.” A long breath in, then out. “I know you think... you’re in danger. Or I’m in danger. Or both of us are.”

“Really just me,” Deadpool helpfully supplied, “but maybe you too, by association, if we stay associated. If you know what I mean. Which means, really, I should be leaving ASAP to keep you _out_ of association.”

Spidey barreled on. “And I know that you, you, you think you have to fight off Francis, or whoever’s causing the danger, or whatever the danger is, by yourself. And that you can’t — can’t trust the rest of us...” He shook his head. “You can’t trust me. I know you think you can’t trust me. But.”

The careful blankness of Spidey’s face, the roughness of his voice — it was all making something very, very heavy settle deep in Deadpool’s stomach. He swallowed hard, but the weight was lodged in tight and wouldn’t budge.

“I trust you, Spidey.” His voice was just as hoarse as Spidey’s, maybe even hoarser. Maybe that was catching, too, just like hesitance, and misery, and general unhappiness. The whispers in the back of his head were getting louder, so he raised his voice over them. “You gotta know, I’d follow you to the ends of the earth.”

That gave Spidey another pause — and seriously, there were too many of those in this conversation, it was making Deadpool feel itchy all over.

“Okay then.”

Deadpool scratched at the back of his neck.

“Then do you believe me that you don’t have to do this on your own?” There was something more to Spidey’s voice now, a thready sort of desperation that made Deadpool’s skin _sting_ . “I know you think you’re in danger, or that you’re putting me in danger by being around me, but — trust me, I can help. I _want_ to help. If you let me help, this will go away, so much faster than if you go at it yourself — and I promise I’ll be safe, nothing will happen to me. Okay?”

Deadpool swallowed hard. “I can’t take that risk, baby boy. I can’t let anything happen to you.”

“Nothing will.” Spidey’s voice was earnest now, and somehow that hurt even worse than the desperation had — because earnestness meant hope, and hope meant being let down, and Deadpool knew he’d let Spidey down sooner or later, it was just an inevitability, like the sun rising in the morning or Francis someday coming back to capture Deadpool and lock him away for good. “I promise. I _promise_ . Just, please, trust me, and — And there’s a place I know, a place we can go where you’ll get all the help you need, I _promise_ , they can fix _everything_ for you if you just let them, but you have to just — just trust me.”

Deadpool gave him a look. A really long, hard look. But no matter how suspicious this magical, mystical place sounded, no matter how much White yelled in the back of his head, **Don’t be an** **_idiot_ ** **, whatever that place is I guarantee it’ll be even worse than Weapon X, get up and walk out now,** **_walk out RIGHT NOW, DEADPOOL, BEFORE YOU REGRET IT,_ ** he couldn’t find anything in Spidey’s face other than pure, desperate hope.

“I can take care of Francis myself.” He balled his hands into fists on the table. “It’ll be safer, Spidey, really, I know what I’m going. It’ll just take a while to find him, but once I do I can kill him, _bang-bang_ , and then he won’t be a danger any longer, to you or me or anyone else. You’ll be safe. So you don’t — I don’t need your help.”

“But I _want_ to.” And then Spidey’s hands were closing, warm and gentle, over Deadpool’s. “I can help. I promise. Trust me, come with me, and let me help you.”

And Deadpool looked down at their hands, curled and woven together, softness and warmth and everything he wanted that he never thought he could have, and thought—

He was tired of this. He was tired of running and of fighting and never knowing where Francis was, how to find him, if to find him, if to stay away from him, what Francis wanted with him, where to go, where to stay, who to trust — he was tired of his ratty abandoned squat of an apartment with electricity or running water — he was tired of the way he’d lived these past few months, all alone with no one but the voices in his head for company.

He didn’t know what Spidey would do to him. Where Spidey would take him. How Spidey wanted to help him. But he did know that he was so very, very tired, and that no matter what, no matter how loudly White shouted, or how suspiciously Spidey spoke... No matter what may happen, he would always trust Spidey.

All Spidey was asking was for Deadpool to trust him.

He looked up, and met Petey’s warm brown eyes.

“Come home with me,” Petey repeated, and Wade gave his hand a small, gentle squeeze, and said:

“Okay.”

* * *


End file.
